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V. 


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THIS   GOODLY   FRAME 
THE    EARTH 


^77?^  V  /MP/? ESS/0 JVS  OF  SCENES,  /NC /DENTS 

AND  PERSONS  /N  A   JOURNEY   TOUCH /NG 

JAPAN,  CH/NA,  EGYPT,  PALESTINE 

AND   GREECE 


FRANCIS   TIFFANY 


BOSTON   AND    NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

<SL\ii  0ibEr>sitie  p»ress,  CambriDge 

1896 


Copyright,  1895, 
Bt  FRANCIS  TIFFANY. 

AM  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  and  Company. 


To 

EDWIN  B.  HASKELL 

To  you,  dear  Friend,  I  gratefully  dedicate  these  few  out  of 

the  countless  happy  experiences  we  shared  on  our  trip  round 

the  world. 

FRANCIS   TIFFANY 


CONTENTS 


GETTING  UNDER  WEIGH 

PAGE 

I.  Providing  Funds  for  Travel     .....  1 
II.  Across  the  American  Continent  .         .          ...  2 

III.  The  Action  of  Wheat  on  Imagination      ...  3 

IV.  The  Rockies 4 

V.  The  Pacific  Ocean 6 

VI.  Linguistic  Privileges    .......  8 

VII.  Arriving  out 9 

JAPAN 

I. 

I.  First  Impressions 13 

II.  The  Promotion  ^f  Domestic  Happiness   ...  14 

III.  Yokohama 15 

IV.  Japanese  Women 18 

V.  The  Japanese  Smile 20 

VI.  The  Curio  Fever 23 

VII.  Straws 25 

n. 

I.  The  Rice  Lands 27 

II.  Kamakura    .         .         .......  28 

III.  The  Buddha 30 

IV.  Back  to  the  Finite 34 

V.  The  Philosopher's  Perch 36 

III. 

I.  Miyanoshita  and  the  Hakone  District          ...  42 

II.  Rice  as  Motive  Power 42 


vi  CONTENTS 

III.  Bamboo  Grass 43 

IV.  The  Fujiya  Hotel 44 

V.  Volcanoes  and  Personal  Cleanliness     ....  45 

VI.  The  Ten  Province  Pass 46 

IV. 

I.  An  Historical  Glimpse 48 

II.  The  Nikko  Groves 51 

m.  The  Nikko  Temples 53 

rV.  Popular  Use  of  the  Temples 56 

V.  Simplicity  of  Japanese  Civilization      ....  58 

VT.  Japanese  Bells 60 

V. 

I.  Japanese  Manners 63 

II.  Japanese  Heroic  Moral  Standards   ....  68 

VI. 

I.  Source  in  Nature  of  Japanese  Art      ....  72 

II.  Variety  in  Unity 74 

III.  Broad  Influence  of  Japanese  Art         ....  78 

IV.  Physical  Conditions  afPecting  Art    ....  79 

VII. 

I.  The  Question  of  Missions 82 

II.  The  Buddhist  Reaction 86 

VIII. 

I.  The  Scientific  Broomstick-Drudge      ....  89 

II.  The  Crusading  Spirit 92 

III.  The  Day  of  the  Pacific  Ocean 94 

IV.  Good-By  to  Japan 95 

CHINA 

I. 

I.  At  Sea  again 97 

II.  Consistent  Conservatism 97 

III.  World  Building 101 


CONTENTS  vii 

IV.  So  near,  and  yet  so  far !             101 

V.  Inside  the  Walls 104 

VI.  Out  into  the  Country 105 

VII.  The  Handwriting  on  the  Wall 108 

n. 

I.  Hong  Kong 110 

II.  Canton  River 113 

III.  Canton's  River  Population 115 

IV.  Business  and  Religion          ,..,..  116 
V.  TheShamien 117 

VI.  Inside  Canton 119 

VII.  Canton's  Examination  Halls     .....  122 

VIII.  A  Government  of  Philosophers 126 

THE  TROPICS 

I.  Away  from  Hong  Kong 135 

II.  Tropical  Yearnings 136 

III.  Singapore 137 

IV.  A  School  for  Sculptors 139 

V.  A  Ravishing  Drive 141 

VI.  The  Botanical  Garden 143 

VII.  A  Borneo  Philosopher 144 

CEYLON 

I.  The  Culmination  of  the  Tropics      ....  149 

n.  Blood  thicker  than  Water 151 

III.  Kandy 152 

IV.  Christmas  in  Kandy 154 

V.  The  Peradeniya  Botanical  Gardens          .         .         .  158 

VI.  An  International  Ecclesiastical  Interview    .        .        .  159 

INDIA 

I. 

I.  Pondicherry      , 163 

II.  The  Hoogly 165 

in.  Darjeeling 166 

IV.  Again  Mongolians ! 169 


viu  CONTENTS 

V.  The  Apotheosis  of  Machinery 170 

VI.  At  Last  the  Himalayas  1 174 

VII.  Tiger  Hill 176 

VIU.  The  Alps  and  the  Himalayas 178 

IL 

I.  Calcutta  .        .        .        .      ■ 180 

II.  How  Empires  fall 182 

HI.  Hindu  Traits 183 

III. 

I.  Benares 186 

II.  Street  Scenes   . 187 

III.  The  Ghats 189 

IV.  Burning  the  Dead 190 

V.  Sati,  or  Widow-Burning 192 

IV. 

I.  Lucknow 195 

II.  The  Siege  of  Lucknow 197 

III.  Cawnpore 199 

V. 

I.  Oriental  Savings-Banks 204 

II.  Happy  or  Miserable  ? 206 

III.  Reaction  from  Bad  Example 209 

IV.  Gaudium  Certaminis 212 

VI. 

I.  A  Glance  at  History  215 

II.  Eliminating  the  Tartar 217 

III.  India's  Alharabra  at  Agra 220 

IV.  Woman  in  the  Evolution  of  Architecture         .         .  223 
V.  The  Oasis 225 

■  VI.  The  Taj  Mahal        .        • 227 

VIL 

I.  Delhi 2,32 


CONTENTS  ix 

vni. 

I.  Jeypore ,        .  238 

II.  An  Elephant  Ride  to  Amber 241 

III.  Mt.  Abu 245 

rV.  Ahmedabad 251 

EGYPT 

I. 

I.  Prelude  to  Egypt 255 

II.  Semitic  Prophets 257 

III.  The  Desert 260 

IV.  Ismailia 262 

V.  The  Land  of  the  Rod 264 

II. 

I.  A  Study  in  Egyptian  Babies 267 

II.  Nile  Hints 269 

III.  The  Gizeh  Pyramids 272 

IV.  Memphis  and  the  Sakkarah  Pyramids      .         .         .  277 
V.  Knight-Errants  of  the  Shovel 281 

VI.  The  Tomb  of  Thi 284 

III. 

I.  Characteristics  of  Nile  Scenery 288 

II.  Pantheistic  Animism 290 

III.  The  Later  Tombs  of  Egypt 294 

rV.  The  Temples  of  Egypt 302 


PALESTINE 

I.  De  Lesseps  building  better  than  he  knew 
II.  Jaffa 

III.  Jaffa  to  Jerusalem 

IV.  Sacred  Cities    .... 
V.  In  what  Frame  of  Mind  ?    . 

VI.  A  Stroll  to  Bethlehem     . 
VII.  The  Church  of  the  Nativity 
VIII.  The  Spirit  and  the  Flesh 
IX.  The  Jews'  Wailing-Place    . 
X.  The  Dead  Sea  and  the  Jordan 


311 
312 
313 
317 
318 
322 
324 
325 
327 
329 


X  CONTENTS 

BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

I.  BeyroTit  and  the  Lebanon  Ranges       ....  33.5 

II.  Baalbec 338 

in.  Damascus 339 

ASIA  MINOR  AND  GREECE 

I.  The  Sail  to  Smyrna 347 

II.  Smyrna 348 

III.  Constantinople 351 

IV.  First  Introduction  to  Attica 351 

V.  The  Parthenon 353 

VI.  Eleusis 357 

VII.  Marathon 359 

VIII.  Athens'  Parting  Benediction 360 


THIS  GOODLY  FRAME 
THE  EARTH 


GETTING  UNDER  WEIGH 

Parsons  or  otherwise,  large  numbers  of  the 
impecunious  stoutly  aver  that  they,  too, 
would  be  glad  of  a  trip  round  the  world,  were  it  not 
for  the  cost  of  the  thing.  This  is  no  valid  excuse. 
It  need  not  cost  one  a  penny,  nay,  on  the  contrary, 
prove  the  happiest  means  of  escape  from  the  outlay 
one  is  subjected  to  by  staying  prosaically  at  home. 
"What  is  the  paradoxical  fellow  driving  at?" 
will  be  the  natural  outcry.  Well,  at  a  statement  of 
the  plainest  matter  of  fact.  Nothing  further  is 
requisite  than  to  drop  in  unexpectedly  of  an  even- 
ing at  the  house  of  a  generous-hearted  friend,  — 
one  of  the  kind  who,  having  freely  received,  loves 
freely  to  give,  —  and  then  and  there  to  have  your 
breath  taken  away  by  his  sudden  exclamation,  "  I 
want  to  go  round  the  world,  and  I  want  you  to  go 
with  me  !  Say  yes,  and  it  shall  not  cost  you  a  yen, 
a  rupee,  or  a  piastre." 

In  a  flash  start  up  before  the  mind's  eye  snow- 
crowned  Fujisan  in  Japan,  with  all  the  Hima- 
layan giants  from  Mt.  Everest  to  Kunchinjinga, 


2  GETTING   UNDER    WEIGH 

thundering  with  the  voices  of  their  united  ava- 
lanches, "  Take  up  with  him  on  the  spot !  "  In 
gentler  notes,  the  same  is  caressingly  murmured 
by  the  waves  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  lapsing  on  the 
roseate,  palm-encircled  beaches  of  Ceylon.  Finally, 
from  out  the  mysterious  depths  of  the  halls  of 
mighty  Karnak  breathes  an  echo  as  from  the 
remotest  ages,  "  Ephemeral  child  of  the  brand-new 
Columbia  of  to-day !  not  a  mummy  in  Egypt  but 
would  leap  to  burst  his  cerements  of  cloth  and 
bitumen,  and  cry  '  Amen ! '  at  such  an  offer." 

It  is,  then,  a  distinct  pleasure,  before  proceeding, 
to  record  the  impressions  of  travel  that  ensued ; 
thus,  by  so  simple  a  suggestion,  to  smooth  the 
elsewise  rugged  way  for  others,  —  impecunious 
perhaps  in  purse,  but  millionaires  on  scenery, 
architecture,  and  the  metaphysical  abysses  of  Orien- 
tal Theosophy. 

Before  visiting  foreign  lands,  it  is  said  to 
be  a  good  thing  to  know  a  little  of  one's  own, 
so  as  not  to  mistake  a  chance  wheelbarrow  one  may 
light  on  in  Tunbuctoo  for  an  entirely  novel  inven- 
tion, and  so  wi-ite  home  in  too  nai've  a  strain  of 
enthusiasm.  Certainly,  in  crossing  the  American 
Continent  to  embark  for  Japan,  one  has  a  chance 
to  see  a  good  deal  of  his  own  native  land,  as  well 
as  —  if  he  mean  to  sail  from  Vancouver  —  of  the 
Canadian  Dominion. 

It  is,  perhaps,  well  enough  to  pass  over  the 
scenes  of  absorbing  interest  that  lie  on  the  route 
between  Boston  and   St.  Paul.     The  perils  and 


ACTION  OF  WHEAT  ON  IMAGINATION     3 

fatigues  of  the  same  journey  have  been  undergone 
by  previous  explorers,  —  notably  by  Lewis  and 
Clark,  and  later  by  General  Fremont,  —  who  have 
recorded  their  topographical  impressions  inch  by 
inch.    So  to  plunge  at  once  into  unknown  realms ! 


Ill 


Getting  away  at  nightfall  from  St.  Paul, 
Minnesota,  one  awakens  the  next  morning 
to  find  himself  afloat  on  a  boundless  ocean  of  wheat 
lands.  The  assertion  of  men  of  science  that  if, 
undistracted  by  sharks  and  horse-mackerel,  the 
codfish  had  a  free  chance  to  rear  to  a  marriageable 
age  all  the  sprightly  young  fry  they  spawn,  they 
would  in  ten  years  pack  the  Atlantic  solid  with 
cod,  has  here  become  outright  demonstration  in 
wheat.  As  one  rolls  along  through  South  Dakota, 
North  Dakota,  Manitoba,  and  beyond,  a  horrible 
nightmare  of  wheat  is  begotten  in  the  imagination. 
All  the  dread  monotony  is  experienced  of  a  sj^s- 
tem  of  "  solitary  confinement  "  in  wheat.  Now,  the 
word  of  Sacred  Writ  demonstrates  its  awful  truth, 
"  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone,"  as,  phy- 
sically and  mentally  congested  with  wheat,  one 
feels  his  gorge  fairly  rising  at  the  thought  of 
swallowing  a  crumb  of  a  roll  or  a  cracker.  As 
well  offer  a  man  dying  of  thirst  in  the  Sahara 
desert  a  tumblerful  of  sand  instead  of  water ! 

Nor  is  this  all.  With  equal  oppression  is  imagi- 
nation drowned,  as  in  an  elevator  bin,  in  its  every 
struggle  to  picture  the  lives  of  the  inhabitants  of 
such  a  farinaceous  region.  Of  course  they  marry 
and  are  given  in  marriage.     Lovely  young  maidens 


4  GETTING   UNDER    WEIGH 

are  led  to  the  altar  ;  but  between  the  nund  and  every 
image  of  the  charming  scene  is  interposed  a  thick 
mist  of  "  Bridal  Veil  "  flour.  No  !  it  is  vain  to 
strufTffle  further  with  the  wheat  hallucination. 
Just  as  dolls  are  stuffed  with  bran,  so  the  baffled 
traveler  finally  succumbs  to  the  delusion  that, 
should  he  tap  a  vein  in  the  arm  of  one  of  the 
natives,  there  woidd  flow  forth,  not  a  stream  of 
ruddy  human  blood,  but  a  stream  of  A  No.  1  Pills- 
bury's  best. 

"  It  is  wisely  ordained,"  says  Goethe,  "  that 
the  trees  shall  not  grow  up  into  the  skies." 
Only  roll  along  far  enough  over  the  dead-level  prai- 
ries, and  at  last  is  vouchsafed  to  weary  man  a  rain- 
bow of  promise  that  not  even  the  waters  of  wheat 
shall  continuously  prevail  over  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Faint  indications  begin  to  attest  that,  in  the 
geological  "  struggle  for  life,"  a  perpendicular  as 
well  as  a  horizontal,  a  jackscrew  as  well  as  a  flat- 
iron  principle  is  at  work  in  nature.  Hurrah !  a 
hill  as  high  as  a  woodchuck's  burrow.  It  is  big 
with  prophecy  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Vaster 
throes  of  an  earth  in  labor  succeed,  and  bring 
forth,  —  is  it  a  huge  barn  ?  No  ;  a  veritable  Alp 
as  big  as  a  barn.  One  is  startled  at  the  sub- 
terranean energies  involved.  But,  so  far,  all  is 
but  prelude.  Tired  of  dead  level.  Nature  finally 
rises  a  sleep-refreshed  giant,  heaving  up,  first  on 
knotty  knees  and  then  on  his  mighty  shoulders, 
the  cmnbering  bedclothes  of  the  prairies,  with  an 
air  of  "  It 's  time  to  get  up  !  "     What  a  Titan  of  a 


THE  ROCKIES  5 

fellow  is  stirring  at  last,  becomes  in  a  few  Lours 
revealed. 

Before  I  actually  saw  tliem,  I  never  could  get  a 
vivid  conception  of  the  essential  genius  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  —  at  any  rate  as  displayed 
along  the  line  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad. 
People  are  forever  darkening  counsel  by  compari- 
sons that  serve  merely  to  show  what  a  thing  is  not. 
Switzerland  has  towering  mountains  ;  therefore  as 
the  Rocky  Mountains  tower,  they  are  the  American 
Switzerland.  In  point  of  fact,  they  are  the  precise 
counterpart  of  Switzerland.  The  Rocky  Mountains 
are,  as  their  name  implies,  the  Rockies^  just  as 
the  Alps  are  what  their  name  —  the  Alpen,  the 
high  pasture  slopes  —  implies.  In  Switzerland 
the  snow-line  descends  four  or  five  thousand  feet 
lower  than  here,  and  so  secures  superb  expanses  of 
snowclad  flanks  and  peaks.  Then,  below  the  line 
of  softest  ermine,  succeed  enormous  stretches  of 
emerald  green  grass-lands,  dotted  with  herds  of 
cattle.  Demand  this  of  the  Rockies,  and  they 
will  flatly  answer :  "  Under  such  a  dazzling  sun 
we  cannot  keep  on  our  snowcaps  ;  and,  as  for  your 
deep-uddered  Swiss  kine,  their  milk  would  dry  up 
here  in  a  day.  But  take  us  as  we  are,  and  we  defy 
Switzerland  to  parallel  us." 

The  Rockies  are  right.  Such  Titanic  sublimity 
of  rock  formations,  such  wrestlings  and  writhings 
of  uptilted  and  contorted  strata,  such  spectacle  of 
a  vast  rock  creation  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain 
until  now,  where  else  is  it  witnessed  on  so  stupen- 
dous a  scale  ?     Now,  in  the  Alps,  all  this  elemental 


6  GETTING   UNDER   WEIGH. 

convulsion  of  nature,  tliis  Titan  reign  of  eliaos,  is 
largely  veiled  from  sight.  It  is  covered  with  per- 
petual snow ;  it  is  hidden  under  regal  mantles  of 
green.  Here  the  Titan  is  naked,  —  "  naked  and 
not  ashamed."  His  gigantic  osseous  structure,  his 
thews  and  sinews,  all  that  constitute  him  Briareus, 
are  seen  in  violent  action.  These  are  his  boast, 
his  glory.  "  What  went  ye  out  into  the  wilderness 
for  to  see?  A  man  clothed  in  soft  raiment?" 
Such  is  the  burden  of  this  John  the  Baptist  moun- 
tain dispensation. 

People  may  quarrel,  if  they  will,  that  Michael 
Angelo  is  not  Raphael,  or  Dante,  Petrarch.  For 
one,  I  find  it  much  wiser  to  enjoy  both  types  of 
men  and  mountains.  So,  thank  God  for  the 
Rockies ! 

It  is  a  great  experience  to  set  sail,  or,  more 
literally,  to  begin  to  twirl  propeller  from 
Vancouver.  Before  reaching  the  open  ocean,  one 
carries  with  him  for  twenty-four  hours  superb 
mountain  ranges  ;  on  the  right  gradually  trending 
northward  to  Alaska,  and  on  the  left  southward 
toward  the  State  of  Washington,  Mt.  Baker  loom- 
ing up  in  the  far  distance  15,000  feet  in  height. 
Then,  too,  how  soothing  to  qualmy  stomachs  the 
thought  that  the  vast  ocean  on  which  one  is  em- 
barking has  earned  for  itself  so  mild  and  pacific  a 
name.  "  What 's  in  a  name  ?  "  A  vast  deal,  pro- 
vided its  bearer  lives  uj)  to  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
how  small  mitigation  is  it  of  a  sentence  to  rack 
and  thumb-screws,  that  it  emanates  from  a  raging 


THE  PACIFIC  OCEAN  7 

tyrant  habitually  addressed  as  His  Serene  High- 
ness !     Equally  true  does  all  this  hold  of  oceans. 

To  be  perfectly  candid,  the  Pacific  is  as  fully 
entitled  to  the  benefit  of  an  alias  as  any  poor  incon- 
sistent human  creature  whom  dire  necessity  compels 
to  alternate  between  roles  as  divergent  as  those  of 
exemplary  deacon  of  the  church  in  one  place  and 
disreputable  gambler  or  horse  thief  in  another.  It 
got  its  Serene  Highness  title  from  the  early  voy- 
agers, who,  after  a  six  weeks  struggle  to  round  Cape 
Horn,  amid  a  whirl  of  gales,  sleet,  hail,  fog,  and 
distracted  albatrosses,  at  last  made  northing  enough 
to  reach  the  beatific  realm  of  the  trade  winds,  and 
then,  —  sky-scrapers,  studding-sails,  everything  set, 
—  to  be  wafted  day  after  day  over  a  summer  sea 
that  by  contrast  seemed  heaven.  Rejoicingly  as 
Dante,  when  escaped  from  the  terrors  of  Inferno, 
could  they  now  sing,  "  To  run  over  better  waters 
the  little  vessel  of  my  genius  now  hoists  its  sails, 
and  leaves  behind  itself  a  sea  so  cruel.  ...  A  soft 
color  of  oriental  sapphire  which  was  gathered  in 
the  serene  aspect  of  the  air,  pure  even  to  the  hori- 
zon, renewed  delight  to  m}'-  eyes  soon  as  I  issued 
from  the  dead  air  that  had  afflicted  my  eyes  and 
my  breast.  The  fair  planet  which  incites  to  love 
was  making  all  the  Orient  to  smile." 

"  O  widowed  northern  region,  since  thou  art 
deprived  of  beholding  these !  "  is  the  continuation 
of  Dante's  strain  more  befitting  those  who  sail  from 
the  high  latitude  of  Vancouver,  —  at  least  as  a  gen- 
eral rule.  The  voyage  is  run  on  the  short  circle, 
close  enou2:h  to  the  Aleutian  Islands  to  let  one  see 


8  GETTING    UNDER    WEIGH. 

now  and  then  what  a  heaven  on  earth  they  must 
provide  for  gulls,  seals,  and  walruses.  None  the 
less,  so  far  as  we  were  concerned,  all  the  way  across 
to  Yokohama  the  Pacific  lived  up  to  its  inviting 
name.  People  there  are,  of  course,  in  whom  the  sub- 
jective element  so  preponderates  over  the  objective, 
that  they  will  get  seasick  under  any  conditions. 
But  there  was  really  no  external  justification  of 
their  conduct.  With  such  a  superb  steamship  as 
the  "  Empress  of  China,"  with  such  an  unspeak- 
able green  and  gold  dragon  breathing  defiance  from 
her  bow,  with  the  privilege  of  two  smoke-stacks,  two 
propellers,  two  hidls,  admirable  fare,  and  almond- 
eyed  Chinese  waiters  in  long  blue  robes  and  pig- 
tails, it  was  nothing  short  of  deep-dyed  ingratitude 
to  turn  up  the  nose  in  nauseated  disgust. 

<• 
Bound,  as  we  were,  for  the  Orient,  there 
was  in  these  Chinese  servants,  —  gliding  to 
and  fro  in  their  felt  slipjjers  like  silent  ghosts, 
their  flowing  robes  gently  undulating  and  their 
pigtails  swaying  in  harmonious  concert,  —  an 
element  of  Arabian  Night  enchantment  hard  to 
describe.  We  felt  in  it  our.fii'st  gentle  plucking 
back,  our  initial  weaning  from  the  brimming  breasts 
of  the  Occident  at  which  hitherto  we  had  drawn 
our  sole  ethnological  nutrition  ;  an  initial  weaning 
very  grateful,  it  must  be  admitted,  from  the  long- 
wonted  realm  of  split  trousers,  creaking  boots, 
bleached-out  skins,  and  eyes  devoid  of  that  furtive 
side-glance  that  seems  to  look  all  round  and  behind 
an  object. 


ARRIVING  OUT  9 

Besides,  from  a  purely  linguistic  point  of  view, 
these  Orientals  furnished  a  university-extension 
course  in  philology  that  was  a  liberal  education  in 
itself.  On  first  going  abroad,  my  friend  and  I 
were  guiltless  of  a  Chinese  word.  Yet  scarcely 
had  we  been  a  day  at  sea  before  we  could  ask  for 
oxtail  soup,  curried  rice,  fillet  of  beef,  or  j)istachio- 
nut  ice-cream  ;  yes,  and  what  was  more  to  the  pur- 
pose, without  fail  get  them. 

Spite  of  all  that  may  be  urged  by  pedants,  bent 
on  glorifying  their  own  attainments,  Chinese  is  not 
a  difficult  tongue  to  master,  —  at  any  rate  under 
the  Meisterschaffc  system  practiced  on  board  the 
Vancouver  steamships.  The  scheme  is  beautiful 
in  its  simplicity.  For  example,  ox-tail  soup  is 
merely  No.  1,  curried  rice  No.  2,  fillet  of  beef  No.  3, 
and  so  on  and  on  to  the  end  of  the  bill  of  fare. 
All  that  is  needful  is  to  call  out  the  requisite  num- 
ber, and  presto !  the  dish  smokes  on  the  table.  Thus, 
as  by  a  wave  of  an  enchanter's  wand,  is  dissipated 
in  an  instant  the  whole  baleful  fog  of  linguistic 
confusion  precipitated  on  the  world  by  the  defiant 
impiety  of  the  projectors  of  the  Babylonian  Tower. 
American,  Frenchman,  Chinese,  Hindoo,  every  man 
hears  his  fellow  speaking  in  his  own  tongue  in 
which  he  was  born. 

We  were  thirteen  days  on  the  passage,  and 
yet  on  going  down  into  the  engine-room,  the 
night  before  our  arrival  out,  it  was  a  startling  sur- 
prise to  find  that  the  ship's  screws  had  not  yet  made 
a  million  revolutions.     Night  and  day,  without  an 


10  GETTING   UNDER    WEIGH 

instant's  intermission,  had  tlie  mighty  hearts  of  the 
engines  been  throbbing,  and  not  yet  a  million  pul- 
sations recorded.  No  finite  mind  can  frame  a  con- 
ception of  what  a  million  means,  say  the  greatest 
mathematicians.  Now  I  felt  it.  Jay  Gould,  with 
his  seventy  millions,  dilated  in  my  mind  to  truly 
astronomic  and  cosmic  immensity. 

The  day  before  our  arrival,  it  rained.  Should 
we,  then,  have  rain  and  mist  to  blot  out  the  glori- 
ous spectacle  of  the  sail  into  Yokohama  bay  ?  Only 
this  once  on  our  whole  voyage  had  our  steam  siren 
been  kept  sounding  for  fog,  making  us  then  per- 
fectly comprehend  why  Ulysses  plugged  with  wax 
the  ears  of  his  crew  when  the  other  siren  lifted  her 
sweet  voice  from  the  rocks.  No !  It  could  not  be 
that  we  were  doomed  to  chilly  drizzle  and  to  a  blot- 
ting-paper atmosphere  soaking  up  all  the  delicate 
outlines  of  the  coast.  Nor  was  it  so.  A  glorious 
sunrise  transfigured  sky,  sea,  and  land  ;  and,  lo  !  in 
ideal  beauty  of  proportion,  from  cone  to  base,  stood 
out  snow-crowned  Fujisan,  lording  it  all  over 
Japan.  Oh,  the  beatitude  of  volcanic  forces,  when 
they  eventuate  in  such  a  miracle  of  beauty !  Tamer 
and  more  prosaic  than  the  man  who  knows  no  fiery 
passions  is  the  land  that  knows  no  earthquakes. 
Who,  with  a  soul  of  poetry  in  him,  would  not 
gladly  see  some  adjacent  county  of  Worcester  torn 
from  its  rooted  foundations  and  lifted  12,000  feet 
nearer  heaven  than  it  ever  stood  before,  to  secure 
from  his  own  windows  the  daily  vision  of  such  a 
joy  forever? 

By  nine  a.  m.  we  were  at  our  moorings,  and  soon 


ARRIVING  OUT  11 

surrounded  by  scores  of  samjjans  eager  to  take 
passengers  ashore.  As  the  radiant  September 
morning  was  warm,  and  the  competitive  sculling 
with  huge  sweeps,  of  the  most  vigorous  kind,  clothes 
soon  came  to  be  felt  unbearable.  Not  that,  to  be- 
gin with,  the  boatmen  had  much  on.  But  now  in 
a  trice  that  little  came  off,  to  a  mere  loin-cloth. 
What  an  intoxicating  feast  of  backs  and  chests,  and 
loins  and  legs,  developed  by  a  lifetime  of  stand-up 
rowing!  ^sthetically  exhilarating  was  the  sight, 
as  though  all  the  statues  in  the  Vatican  —  Apollo, 
Hermes,  Antinous,  Ganymede  —  had  suddenly 
leaped  down  from  their  pedestals  and  taken  to 
sculling  sampans.  Only,  instead  of  white  marble, 
their  bodies  were  of  gold  bronze. 

Satan's  malign  work  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  it 
was  that  first  suggested  clothes.  Not  yet  have 
Japanese  boatmen  given  in  to  the  shamefaced, 
guilty  dogma.  So,  devoutly  be  it  hoped  that  no 
misguided  missionaries  will  feel  bound  in  con- 
science to  make  a  point  of  the  obnoxious  tenet,  — 
at  least  for  sculler-converts. 


JAPAN 


No  traveller  ever  knows  so  much  about  a 
new  country,  —  its  race  characteristics,  its 
institutions,  its  art,  literature,  and  religion,  —  as 
during  his  first  three  days  stay  there,  or  before  he 
has  had  time  to  pick  up  enough  of  the  language  to 
say  good  morning.  It  is  a  pity,  then,  to  let  the 
world  lose  the  benefit  of  his  first  intuitive  divina- 
tions. 

Perhaps  there  is  a  certain  occult  irony  in  the  fact 
that  one's  earliest  innocent  impressions  of  Japan 
are  gathered  from  his  perch  on  the  seat  of  a  two- 
wheeled  adult  baby  carriage  called  a  jinrikisha,  in 
which  a  male  Japanese  drags  him  round,  instead 
of,  as  in  his  previous  infancy,  a  Hibernian  lassie, 
and  that,  too,  at  a  pace  befitting  the  greater  hardi- 
hood of  his  time  of  life.  If  of  a  philosophic  cast  of 
mind,  one's  first  speculations  naturally  turn  on  the 
comparative  advantages,  as  an  instrument  of  pro- 
pulsion, of  a  man  or  a  horse.  The  conclusion  is 
entirely  in  favor  of  the  man.  The  horse  is  a  brute ; 
the  man  is  a  rational  being.  The  horse  shies  or 
runs  away ;  the  man  does  neither.  The  horse  is  in- 
capable of  conversation  ;  the  man  is  at  once  guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend.  Serene  contemplation 
and  active  driving  are  incompatible,  as  is  witnessed 


14  JAPAN 

in  the  biograpliles  of  so  many  pliilosophers  who 
have  run  over  countless  children,  smashed  the 
vehicles  of  other  peoj^le,  and  ended  off  with  break- 
ing their  own  necks.  To  see  a  country  to  profit, 
one  needs  to  give  the  rein  to  his  own  free  fancy  and 
not  to  the  jaws  of  a  brute  beast. 

From  his  first  day  even  in  a  foreign  land 
the  humane  and  enlightened  traveler  is 
eagerly  on  the  lookout  for  fruitfid  ideas  to  carry 
back  with  him.  He  yearns  that  those  who  have  to 
stay  at  home  shall  reap  some  benefit  from  his  being 
happy  enough  to  get  away.  Loud,  then,  was  my 
Eureka  of  joy  to  find,  in  less  than  half  an  hour, 
that  Japan  had  startled  me  with  a  suggestion  which 
opened  up  visions  of  enhanced  domestic  bliss  to 
millions  in  my  native  land.  It  took  this  shape. 
Bicycles  are  essentially  anti-social  and  selfish  insti- 
tutions. The  only  valid  plea  for  them  is  that  they 
develop  the  calves  of  the  legs.  But  calf  for  calf, 
these  Japanese  runners  would  bear  away  the  prize 
at  every  cattle-show  in  the  country.  What,  then, 
if  in  America,  tender,  but  straitened  husbands, 
incapable  of  a  horse  and  wagon,  would  but  consent 
to  abandon  their  selfish  wheels  and  to  brace  their 
thews  and  sinews  to  the  chivalrous  work  of  treat- 
ing their  delicate  wives  to  frequent  jinrikisha  spins 
on  the  Brighton  road  !  Contrast  with  this  the 
murderous  adage  about  a  chance  to  kill  two  birds 
with  one  stone !  Here,  at  a  stroke,  is  power  to 
impart  fresh  health  and  joy  to  two  loving  mates, 
along  with   delightful  associations  of  scenery  and 


YOKOHAMA.  15 

companionship  that  would  perpetually  endear  them 
to  one  another. 

Let  the  next  convention  in  the  higher  interests 
of  woman  take  up  seriously  this  weighty  matter. 
Depend  upon  it,  man  will  never  be  taught  his 
rightful  place  in  creation  till  put  into  the  shafts 
and  spurred  on  by  duty  and  love  to  make  his  six 
miles  an  hour  for  the  health  and  delectation  of  his 
better  half.  As  to  the  future  erection,  in  some 
great  public  park,  of  a  statue  smiling  benigiiantly 
down  on  a  thousand  flying  jinrikishas,  and  to 
which,  as  they  speed  by,  happy  wives  and  proud 
husbands  look  up  with  eyes  brimful  of  gratitude,  — 
be  all  that  as  it  may ! 

Like  all  seaport  towns,  Yokohama  presents 
an  odd  intermixture  of  native  and  foreign 
characteristics.  Old  and  new  Jaj)an  here  jostle 
one  another  in  the  queerest  fashion.  At  anchor  in 
the  harbor  lie  huge  modern  steamships  and  iron- 
clads, along  with  clumsy  junks,  —  while,  ashore, 
Chinese  lanterns  and  electric  lights,  bare  legs  and 
stove-pipe  hats,  straw  sandals  and  india-rubber 
boots,  mingle  in  the  most  incongruous  way.  Here 
comes  along  a  man  in  a  rice-straw  thatch  of  a 
cloak,  suggestive  of  a  porcupine  in  a  partially  qui- 
escent state,  —  his  quills  prone  instead  of  erect  with 
anger.  As  a  device  for  shedding  rain  it  is  pecu- 
liarly effective,  each  separate  straw  serving  as  a 
distinct  conductor.  But  the  next  man  wears  a 
cheap  mackintosh.  Incongruities  like  these  might 
be  multiplied  to  any  extent. 


16  JAPAN. 

There  is  a  foreign  resident  as  well  as  a  purely 
Japanese  quarter  of  the  town.  The  first  is  built 
up  with  high,  solid  hotels,  dwellings,  and  ware- 
houses, as  a  special  invitation  to  earthquakes. 
Along  its  water  line  runs  a  broad  boulevard  called 
"  The  Bund,"  planted  with  trees,  and  commanding 
an  entrancing  view  over  the  bay.  The  second,  or 
Japanese  quarter  covers  ten  times  the  space  with 
its  low,  story-and-a-half  wood  structures,  chimney- 
less,  cellar-less,  and  with  the  rounded  corner  posts 
set  into  grooved  stone  sockets,  to  admit,  under 
earthquake  shocks,  of  a  "  bye-baby-bunting " 
oscillation  that  must  be  soothing  to  the  feelings. 
The  streets  are  entirely  unpaved,  so  that  in  times 
of  rain  every  man,  —  and  the  same  law  applies  to 
women,  —  has  to  become  a  "  pavement  unto  him- 
self "  by  wearing  pattens,  with  cross  pieces  set 
underneath,  that  raise  him  two  and  three  inches 
from  the  ground.  For  so  short  a  people  as  the 
Japanese,  this  proves  an  inmiense  enhancement  in 
dignity  of  appearance,  and  in  rainy  weather  they 
wear  a  truly  imposing  look. 

Certainly,  to  one  accustomed  to  the  brick  and 
stone  built  cities  of  America  and  Europe,  there  is 
something  in  the  first  sight  of  a  great,  swarming 
beehive  of  a  city  made  out  of  nothing  but  frail 
wood  structures  huddled  close  together,  that  is  cal- 
culated to  make  him  shudder  at  the  thought  of 
kerosene,  and  question  how  great  the  blessing  our 
own  country  has  conferred  on  Japan  by  sending 
out  this  especial  form  of  missionary  enlightenment. 
Earthquakes  were   bad   enough,  but   earthquakes 


YOKOHAMA.  17 

and  kerosene,  hand  and  glove  with  one  another ! 
For  miles  on  miles  stretch  these  low,  wood  struc- 
tures with  no  distinctive  architectural  feature  but 
aboriginal  Tartar  roof,  —  a  plain  outgrowth  of  the 
primitive  Tartar  tent,  —  together  with  a  capacity 
of  lying  all  open  to  the  public  gaze  unexampled 
elsewhere. 

Indeed,  in  Japan,  the  sliding-door  principle 
reaches  its  acme.  We  at  home  know  it  merely  as  a 
means  of  practically  throwing  two  rooms  into  one, 
while  here  the  entire  interior  partitions  of  the  house 
are  all  sliding  doors,  in  the  shape  of  screens 
covered  with  glazed  paper.  Add  to  this  that  the 
whole  street  front  is  daily  taken  off  the  house,  and 
it  will  be  clear  at  a  glance  that  no  other  country  in 
the  world  incites  laudable  curiosity  to  so  rewarding 
a  study  of  all  that  is  going  on  in  its  shops,  parlors, 
sleeping  rooms,  nurseries,  and  kitchens.  So  accus- 
tomed, indeed,  are  the  mass  of  Japanese  to  living  in 
public,  as  no  longer  to  be  conscious  of  the  fact  that 
they  are  in  public.  Having  no  contrast  in  their 
minds  of  the  feeling  of  privacy,  they  are  as  perfectly 
at  their  ease  under  the  eye  of  man  as  under  the  eye 
of  the  sun.  Each  man  is  thus  shut  up  to  establish- 
ing his  own  castle  inside  his  own  skin.  It  were  a 
curious  subject  of  investigation  how  much  this  per- 
petual living  in  public  has  had  to  do  with  the  for- 
mation of  a  marvelously  perfected  external  ceremo- 
nial type  of  manner,  —  very  charming,  very  seduc- 
tive, no  doubt  —  but  which  reveals  no  more  of  what 
is  actually  going  on  inside  the  man  than  the  shell 
of  a  turtle  reveals  the  emotions  really  agitating  his 


18  JAPAN 

troubled  or  peaceful  spirit.  Nature,  after  all,  has 
a  way  of  "  getting  even  "  with  all  kinds  of  circum- 
stances. 

None  the  less,  Japan  is  the  country  of  countries 
for  watching  the  perpetual  going  on  of  the  external 
comedy  of  human  life.  The  curtain  is  always  up 
and  the  play  in  lively  progress.  This  is  the  first 
spell  of  fascination  exercised  on  the  spectator.  In 
Europe  and  America,  on  the  contrary,  the  reflective 
traveler  is  perpetually  annoyed  at  being  shut  out 
by  doors  and  blinds  from  any  free  study  of  the  do- 
mestic life  of  the  inmates.  Should  he  steal  up 
to  a  window  and  flatten  his  nose  against  the  pane  of 
glass,  his  conduct  is  deemed  intrusive.  But  how 
else  can  he  hope  to  gain  adequate  comprehension 
of  the  sacred  seclusion  of  the  English  or  German 
home  ?  Here,  thank  Heaven,  one  can  quietly  loaf, 
and,  without  discomposing  husband,  wife,  or  child, 
watch  everything  going  on  within,  —  yes,  and  very 
likely  know  just  as  much  about  it  as  he  did  before ! 

As  for  human  beings,  no  sight  at  first  makes 
so  fascinating  an  impression  on  the  new- 
comer in  Japan  as  that  of  the  young  women.  They 
are  such  dainty,  miniature  creatures,  and  wear  such 
a  guise  of  having  just  flitted  down  from  the  jDretty 
pattern  on  a  paper  umbrella,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  take  them  seriously  as  responsible  beings.  If 
a  bevy  of  them  laughingly  sprang  back  on  top  of 
such  an  umbrella  and  re-grouped  themselves  into 
the  original  design,  it  would  not  surprise  one  a  bit. 
A  halo  of  perpetual  child  grace  surrounds  them. 


JAPANESE   WOMEN  19 

The  pretty  patterns  of  their  robes,  with  wide-open- 
ing sleeves  and  gayly-flowered  belts ;  their  shining 
black  hair  done  up  to  last  a  week  without  re-dress- 
ing, and  stuck  through  with  gilt  and  enamel  pins 
enough  to  hold  it  safe  in  a  gale  of  wind ;  their 
golden  yellow  complexions  shot  through  with  a 
rosy  blush  ;  their  dainty  figures  and  ever  smiling 
eyes,  all  combine  in  a  charming  Pinafore  picture 
that  calls  out  the  oddest  kind  of  a  half  tender- 
father,  half  fond-lover  feeling  in  the  breast.  Easily 
in  pi-ettily  modified  shape,  revives  the  essence  of 
the  old  Greek  fable,  —  how  some  exquisitely  artis- 
tic Pygmalion  of  a  toy-maker,  infatuated  over  the 
charm  of  one  of  his  own  daintiest  productions, 
should  have  wrung  from  the  gods  the  boon  of 
power  to  make  it  actually  breathe  and  live. 

Often  at  home  we  hear  an  infatuated  parent  say 
of  his  charming  little  girl  of  ten,  "  Oh  that  I  could 
keep  her  as  she  is,  and  never  have  her  grow  a  bit 
older  or  bigger  !  "  Well,  here  is  the  very  thing 
before  one's  eyes,  —  the  artless  grace  of  childhood 
lingering  on,  spite  of  calendar,  marriage,  and 
mothei'hood.  Yes ;  but  they  are  only  playing  at 
motherhood,  as  little  girls  play  with  dolls ;  tliey 
surely  cannot  mean  that  you  shall  take  the  baby  in 
earnest ! 

Such,  —  open  to  future  correction  —  is  one's 
first  inevitable  impression  of  these  dainty  creatures. 
Culture,  as  the  word  is  understood  in  New  England, 
has  made  no  inroads  on  their  complexions  or  eye- 
sight. They  have  never  read  Emerson,  never 
dipped  into  Kant.     Their  sole  "  categorical  impera- 


20  JAPAN 

tive  "  is  to  charm  by  amiabiHty.  Their  faces  shine 
as  with  the  reflected  light  of  an  insensible  perspi- 
ration of  amiability.  Amiability  transpires  from 
every  pore,  and  forms  a  visible  nimbus  around  their 
whole  personality  to  an  extent  of  at  least  eighteen 
inches. 

It  would  be  half  invidious,  however,  to  charac- 
terize this  child  charm  of  the  young  women  of 
Japan  under  the  aspect  of  arrest  of  development. 
The  phrase  implies  something  abnormal  and  stunted. 
On  the  contrary,  they  seem  to  have  reached  their 
full  stage  of  child  maturity,  and  never  to  have  been 
meant  to  go  any  farther,  —  never  to  have  been 
fashioned  to  reach  self-consciousness.  As  one 
grows  familiar  with  Japanese  gardens,  planted 
with  miniature  beeches,  pines,  and  oaks,  adorned 
with  miniature  rivers,  bridges,  and  lakes,  and  set 
off  with  a  miniature  volcano  and  with  a  miniature 
gorge  suggestive  of  Fujisan  and  the  abysses  on  its 
flanks  —  the  whole  pretty  scene  from  Lilliput  seems 
lacking  in  flavor  of  natural  human  interest  till  one 
sees  in  his  mind's  eye  these  dainty  little  beings 
turned  loose  to  play  there. 

Indeed,  as  a  preacher,  one  would  hardly  know 
how  to  adapt  a  serious  sermon  to  their  spiritual 
estate,  but  would  feel  the  duties  of  his  responsible 
calling  graciously  fulfilled  in  taking  his  little  flock 
to  picnics  and  watching  them  smile. 

Some  one  has  written  a  book  on  the  Japa- 
nese Smile.     I  have  never  read  it,  but  here 
is  my  spontaneous  impression.     For  a  thousand  or 


THE  JAPANESE  SMILE  21 

more  years  now  the  smile  has  been  the  most  vital 
tenet  of  Ja^ianese  social  religion.  Unintermitting 
as  has  been  their  devotion  to  the  cultivation  of 
chrysanthemums  and  wistarias,  still  more  uninter- 
mitting has  been  their  devotion  to  the  cultivation 
of  the  smile.  "  The  road  to  happiness  and  the  road 
to  fortune  lie  in  the  smile,"  is  a  familiar  proverb. 
Even  if  one  is  to  communicate  the  news  of  the 
death  of  his  nearest  and  dearest,  or  of  the  burning 
down  of  his  house,  or  of  the  total  wreck  of  his 
property,  he  is  to  do  it  with  a  smile.  Let  no  one 
trouble  another  with  a  sign  of  grief  or  pain  !  Most 
especially  is  this  the  law  for  woman,  the  end  and 
aim  of  whose  existence  is  to  charm  her  superior, 
man,  —  the  being  for  whom  she  was  created.  Now, 
nothing  short  of  a  thousand  years  of  inherited  prac- 
tice could  have  achieved  the  result  witnessed  on 
every  hand.  What  wry  faces  we  make  when  try- 
ing, in  company,  to  smile  cheerfully  over  an  ulcer- 
ated tooth !  but  the  Japanese  woman  can  do  it  as 
naturally  and  sweetly  as  though  the  malign  molar 
were  a  piece  of  French  confectionery. 

For  example,  only  a  couple  of  days  after  arriv- 
ing, I  went  with  my  travelling  companion  into  the 
country  to  visit  a  man  who  had,  for  a  number  of 
years,  been  a  servant  in  his  household  in  Massa- 
chusetts, but  had  now  returned  to  Japan  and  taken 
unto  himself  a  young  wife.  The  two  were  living 
in  a  very  humble  way,  raising  silk-worms. 

Duly  taking  off  our  shoes,  we  politely  entered  in 
our  stocking  feet,  and  before  long  were  presented 
to  Mrs.  Tokyo,  as,  by  way  of  disguise,  I  will  call 


22  JAPAN 

her.  Oh,  the  inimitable  grace  with  which  she 
glided  down  on  hands  and  knees  before  us,  and 
touched  the  ground  three  times  with  her  forehead ! 
In  my  whole  life  I  never  felt  so  queer  a  sense  of 
somehow  or  other  being  the  blessed  babe,  subjected 
to  the  adoration  of  the  shepherds.  No  doubt  the 
mental  confusion  was  pardonable  in  the  case  of  one, 
for  the  first  time  in  life,  an  object  of  female  wor- 
ship. My  friend  and  I,  of  course,  did  our  best  to 
return  the  salutation  ;  but  we  must  have  appeared 
sheer  bai'barians.  Veiled  in  her  flowing  robes  and 
girt  with  her  broad,  rich  belt,  Mrs.  Tokyo's  every 
movement  was  grace  itself ;  while  our  stiff  joints 
enacted  the  angularity  of  a  pair  of  skeletons  at  a 
court  presentation. 

The  more  formal  part  of  the  ceremonial  over,  we 
now  sat  down  together  on  the  floor  matting,  Mrs. 
Tokyo  with  her  feet  and  limbs  tucked  under  her  as 
daintily  as  a  bird  tucks  her  head  under  her  wing, 
and  we  with  ours  sprawled  ovit.  Now  came  the 
chance  to  study,  at  close  quarters,  the  mystery  of 
the  Japanese  smile.  At  every  pleasant  word  ad- 
dressed her  through  the  wretched  medium  of  her 
husband's  interpretation,  the  smile  beamed  forth 
afresh,  with  a  sort  of  afterglow  lingering  on  till 
another  siinrise  broke  in  rose  and  gold.  And  yet 
all  this  while  the  poor,  dear  creature  must  have 
been  suffering  torture.  To  her  we  were  as  envoys 
extraordinary  and  ministers  plenipotentiary  from 
Teheran,  infinitely  her  superiors  in  education,  so- 
cial position,  knowledge  of  the  world,  —  in  every- 
thing;  but   grace.     But   all    inward    torment   was 


I 


THE   CURIO  FEVER  23 

hidden  behind  the  girlish  glee  and  sweetness  of  the 
smile. 

"  What  force  of  will,  what  power  of  self-con- 
trol !  "  the  New  England  mind  would  argue.  No, 
there  was  no  will  in  it.  The  Japanese  smile  is  a 
national  institution,  and  not  an  individual  act.  It 
is  the  distilled  essence  of  a  thousand  years  of  trans- 
mitted practice.  Though  at  the  farthest  remove  in 
beauty  from  the  abstract  grin  which  was  all  that 
remained  of  the  vanishing  cat  in  "  Alice  in  Won- 
derland," it  none  the  less  represents  just  such 
an  abstraction.  No  need  is  there  of  anything  be- 
hind it.  In  the  majority  of  cases  there  is  nothing 
behind  it.  It  now  floats  disengaged  on  the  air, 
without  conscious  motive,  ^j?«'e  smile  |;er  se.  In- 
voluntarily, I  recalled  the  words  of  Napoleon  to 
the  French  troops  in  Egypt,  — "  Forty  centuries 
look  down  upon  your  deeds !  "  Only  the  words 
took  on  the  slightly  modified  shape,  "  Forty  centu- 
ries smile  on  you  through  the  lips  and  eyes  of  Mrs. 
Tokyo ! " 

Of  course,  to  one  habituated  to  the  streets 
VI.  . 

of  an  American  or  a  European  city,  with 

their  massive  buildings  and  plate-glass  windows  for 
the  display  of  goods,  the  uniform  monotony  of  the 
long  rows  of  plain,  low,  frontless  structures  of  wood 
imparts,  in  Japan,  a  decidedly  shanty-like  look  to 
a  city.  Perforce,  one  thinks  of  an  immensely  mag- 
nified Leadville,  or  like  mining  towns  in  Colorado, 
struck  with  a  stupendous  "  boom "  of  prosperity, 
while  still  in  the  board  and  shingle  stage  of  archi- 


24  JAPAN 

tectural  evolution.  Once,  however,  begin  to  in- 
spect the  treasures  exposed  in  the  shops,  and  forth- 
with Aladdin's  battered  old  lamp  is  at  its  magic 
work.  What  a  wealth  of  bronzes,  vases,  exquisite 
designs  in  porcelain,  lacquer,  inlaid  work,  ivory 
carving !  The  shop  seems  but  a  cheap  wood-box 
to  pack  all  these  costly  articles  into.  One  cannot 
escaj^e  a  half-humorous  sense  of  how  thoroughly 
Wordsworth  would  have  enjoyed  such  an  exhibi- 
tion of  "  plain  living  and  high  shop-keeping." 

Now  sets  in,  with  all  who  have  money  to  spend, 
the  mania  of  curio-buying,  —  as  distinct  a  form  of 
malarial  fever  as  attacks  those  first  reaching  the 
Congo,  or  the  Niger,  in  Africa.  The  blood-tem- 
perature mounts  to  105°,  the  eyes  glare  wild,  the 
cheeks  burn  with  a  hectic  flush.  Only  to  think  of 
it !  —  the  century-old  Feudal  State  of  forty  million 
people  suddenly  broken  up,  and  such  a  wealth  of 
Daimio  and  Samurai  armor,  pikes,  swords,  trin- 
kets, carvings,  bronzes,  precipitated  in  an  ava- 
lanche on  the  market,  —  not  to  speak  of  the  shoals 
of  infinitely  clever  artisans  ever  in  the  background 
to  supply  new  antiques  as  fast  as  the  old  ones  are 
exhausted. 

Personally  protected  myself  from  any  attack  of 
the  curio-fever  by  the  quinine  tonic  of  lack  of 
funds,  it  was  still  vastly  interesting  to  study  the 
violent  symptoms  in  others.  However  stoutly 
cynical  moralists  like  La  Rochefoucauld  may  deny 
it,  there  is,  after  all,  such  a  thing  as  disinterested 
shopping,  —  shopping  through  pure  unadulterated 
sympathy  with  a  friend  who  is  able  to  indulge  in 


STRA  WS  25 

lavish  expenditures  you  yourself  cannot  afford. 
For  the  exercise  of  this  virtue,  I  was  most  felici- 
tously blest,  as  in  the  instance  of  my  opulent  trav- 
eling- companion,  the  fever  broke  out  in  the  most 
virulent  shape  from  the  day  of  oar  arrival  in  Yoko- 
hama, —  to  the  degree  even  of  causing  him,  in  the 
delirium  of  the  first  night,  to  rave  about  cabling 
for  an  additional  letter  of  credit  so  immense  in 
sum  total,  that  hardly  could  the  Bank  of  England 
have  cashed  it.  In  three  days  he  had  accumulated 
Samurai  swords  enough  to  equip  a  regiment  of 
cavalry ;  screens  enough  to  fence  in  Boston  Com- 
mon ;  exquisitely  embroidered  silk  bedspreads 
enough  to  cover  all  the  beds  in  all  the  wards  of 
the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital ;  ivory  carv- 
ings enough  to  create  a  panic  among  the  yet  re- 
maining elephants  in  Africa.  Vastly  instructive 
was  it  to  go  round  with  him  and  see  him  purchase 
experience.  It  was  a  liberal  education  in  shop- 
ping- 

In  recording  one's  impressions  of  a  new  and 
strange  land,  it  is  perhaps  only  just  to  set 
down  first  those  that  seem  lighter  and  more  tri- 
vial. Light  and  trivial,  however,  they  are  not  to 
one  who  looks  at  them  with  a  deeper  eye.  Straws 
show  which  way  the  winds  blow  and  the  currents 
set.  So,  if  only  one  learns  these  grave  facts,  what 
matter  that  it  was  a  dancing  straw  that  taught  him. 
Moreover,  in  venturing  on  a  little  unobtrusive 
book,  it  will  never  do  for  the  writer  too  suddenly 
to  throw  open  the  flood-gates  to  the  mighty  tide 


26  JAPAN. 

of  statesmanlike  views,  philosophic  speculation,  aes- 
thetic range  and  rapture,  he  feels  himself  capable 
of  pouring  forth.  This  might  frighten  off  modest 
readers,  humbly  distrustful  of  their  power  to  cope 
with  such  a  mind. 


11. 

Among  the  first  excursions  from  Yokohama 
the  visitor  to  Japan  is  eager  to  make,  is 
the  one  to  Kamakura,  to  see  the  colossal  bronze 
image  of  the  Buddha.  How  often  had  I  read  and 
dreamed  of  this,  and  now  it  was  realized  romance 
that  it  was  so  close  at  hand.  One  leaves  by  rail, 
and,  after  a  ride  of  twenty  miles,  takes  to  the 
omnipresent  jinrikisha  for  a  few  miles  more.  The 
rice-land  country,  through  which  the  train  runs,  is 
beautiful  beyond  praise. 

Not  personally  addicted  to  rice  as  an  article  of 
diet,  —  unless,  perhaps,  as  a  mere  vehicle  for  the 
piquant  stimulus  of  curry,  —  I  was  soon  forced  to 
admit  that  the  cultivation  of  this  cereal  for  purely 
sesthetic  ends  would  prove  an  enhancement  of  the 
charms  of  the  Garden  of  Eden.  At  this  late  Sep- 
tember season  of  the  year,  the  rice-lands  stretch 
out  in  the  sunshine  a  sea  of  gold.  Since  rice  de- 
clines to  grow  except  in  water,  and  water  declines 
to  stand  still  except  on  a  perfect  level,  the  im- 
mense area  of  alluvial  deposit  in  which  the  plant 
roots  wears  the  look  of  a  lake  of  luxuriant,  sunlit 
vegetation.  Encircling  in  graceful  curves  this  vast 
burnished  expanse  —  now  jutting  out  into  it  in 
promontories  and  now  retreating  to  leave  space  for 
lovely  bays  —  are  hills  densely  wooded,  completing 


28  JAPAN 

the  picture  with  ravishing  contrasts  of  form  and 

color. 

Curiously  enough,  each  charming  little  valley, 
with  its  brook  winding  down  between  the  densely 
wooded  hills  to  the  shining  level  of  the  plain,  now 
delights  the  eye  with  the  exact  transcript  of  a 
series  of  beautiful  cascades  of  golden  rice.  As  in 
the  gardens  of  Versailles,  streams  of  water  are 
made  to  run  down  great  flights  of  broad  stone 
steps,  breaking  into  a  gentle  fall  at  each  suc- 
cessive step,  so  here  the  same  effect  is  wrought 
by  utilizing  the  water  of  the  descending  brooks 
for  successive  terraces  of  rice.  So  vivid  the  im- 
pression of  life  and  motion,  that  literally  it  seems 
as  though  the  beautiful  plant  itself  had  taken  to 
the  mobile  ways  of  the  element  in  which  it  grows. 
When  one  pictures  the  scene  of  an  infinite 
variety  of  these  lovely  little  valleys,  pouring  their 
brooks  of  gold  through  luxuriantly  wooded  defiles 
into  a  sea  of  gold  below,  he  will  have  presented  to 
the  mind  the  sight  that  makes  one  of  Japan's 
most  characteristic  beauties. 

Though  once  a  capital  of  Japan,  with  1,000,- 
000  inhabitants,  all  that  remains  of  Kama- 
kura  to-day  is  a  struggling  village  on  beautiful 
Sagami  bay,  the  next  bay  southward  of  that  of 
Yokohama.  Besides  a  temple  to  Hachiman,  the 
God  of  War,  and  another  to  Quannon,  the  God- 
dess of  Tenderness  and  Love,  and  the  great  im- 
age of  the  Buddha,  here  called  the  Daibutsu,  no 


KAMAKURA  29 

traces  remain  of  what,  in  1400,  was  an  immense 
city.  All  has  lapsed  back  to  primitive  hills,  valleys 
and  trees. 

At  first  one  is  tempted  to  smile  derisively  at  the 
statement  that  a  million  people  once  joyed,  suffered 
and  died  here  in  a  crowded  capital,  and  to  say, 
"  Oriental  figures  must  be  taken  with  oriental  sta- 
tistical imagination  !  "  But  this  were  a  mistake. 
Japanese  cities  leave  no  ruins.  With  the  removal 
of  Mikado,  or  Shogun,  to  another  spot,  —  and  sixty 
times  has  this  occurred  in  the  course  of  Japanese 
history,  —  the  card -board  city  is  abandoned  to  rot 
away  or  be  burned  for  fire- wood,  — just  as  with  the 
North  American  Indians :  when  the  chief  shifts 
his  camping  ground,  the  whole  wigwam  village 
must  follow  in  his  train.  It  is  the  same  experi- 
ence, only  on  a  vaster  scale.  Perhaps,  as  a  symbol 
of  the  transitoriness  and  evanescence  of  all  finite 
things,  of  the  vanity  of  the  griefs  and  passions  bar- 
ricadoed  in  the  wriggling  ant-hills  of  human  life, 
no  spectacle  could  be  presented  more  fitted  to  at- 
tune the  mind  to  the  contemplation  of  the  serene^ 
Nirvana-wrapped  Buddha.  As  one  walks  medita- 
tively nearly  a  mile  back  from  the  sea  shore,  along 
an  avenue  shaded  with  century-old  cryptomerias,  to 
the  elevation  on  which  are  seated  the  temples  of 
Hachiman  and  Quannon,  it  is  the  counterpart,  in 
this  temple  of  Nature,  of  traversing  the  main  aisle 
of  a  Gothic  cathedral  to  approach  the  Holy  of 
Holies  of  the  altar. 


30  JAPAN 

All  this  delay  is  not  keeping  the  colossal 
Buddha  too  long  waiting.  He  recks  not  of 
time  or  space.  He  dwells  in  a  realm  in  which  the 
finite  is  swallowed  up  in  the  infinite.  He  has  en- 
tered on  Nirvana.  While  he  is  seated  there,  century 
after  century  lapses  unheeded  by.  The  magnifi- 
cent feudalism  of  the  past  is  broken  in  pieces ;  the 
noisy  Occident  clamors  at  the  gates  of  the  Orient ; 
the  thunder  of  Commodore  Perry's  guns  rever- 
berates in  Yokohama  Bay ;  the  fierce,  discordant 
shriek  of  the  locomotive,  symbol  of  the  insane 
restlessness  and  fever  of  the  finite,  tears  the  quiet 
air  into  shreds.  But  he  broods  on,  forever  lifted 
out  of  and  above  the  whole  mad  "causal  nexus"  of 
desire,  pursuit,  possession,  leading  inevitably  on  to 
satiety,  heart-break,  greed,  crime,  dust  and  ashes. 

Overwhelmingly  one  feels  all  this,  as  through  an 
avenue  of  giant  trees  he  approaches  the  colossal 
image  of  the  Buddha.  It  is  vast  enough  in  its  pro- 
portions to  seem  a  part  of  surrounding  nature, 
to  awaken  the  vague  sense  of  sharing  the  purely 
elemental  life.  The  prosaic  mathematics  of  size 
simply  belittles  and  vulgarizes  the  weight  of  the 
impression.  In  a  sitting  posture  fifty  feet  high, 
forty  feet  broad,  eyes  three  feet,  mouth  seven  feet 
long,  —  these  are  statistics  for  the  emjity,  gaping 
crowd.  One  hastens  to  fling  the  figures  off  his 
mind,  and,  instead,  to  revert  to  Keats'  awe-inspir- 
ing parallel  of  Saturn  in  the  gloomy  grove ;  so  like 
and  yet  unlike. 

"  Deep  in  the  shady  sadness  of  a  vale 
Far  sunken  from  the  healthy  breath  of  mom, 


THE  BUDDHA  31 

Far  from  the  fiery  noon,  and  eve's  one  star, 
Sat  gray-haired  Saturn,  quiet  as  a  stone, 
Still  as  the  silence  round  about  his  lair ; 
Forest  on  forest  hung  about  his  head 
Like  cloud  on  cloud." 

Colossal  embodiment  of  a  great  world-religion 
that  has  brought  rest  to  millions  of  the  weary  and 
heavy-laden,  the  tranquil,  breathless  essence  of  that 
rest  revealed  in  its  now  super-sensuous  founder,  — 
such  is  the  significance  of  the  vast  presence  before 
one !  The  mighty  head  bowed  in  serene  tran- 
quillity, the  breathless  calm,  the  peace  too  massive, 
too  diffused,  too  elemental,  to  suggest  any  finite 
form  of  thought,  of  desire,  of  emotion,  —  yes,  the 
peace  passing  understanding,  which  could  not  be 
what  it  is  if  the  understanding  could  grasp  and 
measure  it,  —  this,  the  ineffable,  interior  heaven 
of  the  supreme  mystics  of  all  ages,  of  Plotinus, 
Boehme,  Saint  Teresa  of  Avila,  is  what  the  great 
image  makes  palpable  to  soul  and  sense. 

Still,  it  naturally  may  be  asked,  is  it  not  to  its 
colossal  magnitude  that  the  Kamakura  Buddha 
owes  the  main  reason  of  the  overwhelming  impres- 
sion it  exerts  ?  Of  course,  it  is  to  this,  if  only  we 
add  colossal  magnitude  suffused  through  its  every 
dreaming  atom  with  indwelling  soul.  Magnitude 
means  magnitude.  The  little  may  suggest,  but 
cannot  body  forth,  the  vast  and  circumscribing. 

All  the  sublime  creations  of  the  ages  are  colossal 
in  mass.  The  wrestle  of  Job  with  the  Almighty, 
the  Prometheus  of  -^schylus,  the  Lear  of  Shake- 
speare, the  Satan  of  Milton,  the  Fifth  Symphony 


32  JAPAN 

of  Beethoven,  each  and  all  are  and  must  be  colossal 
to  produce  the  effect  they  work  on  the  mind.  Des- 
olation, defiance,  revolt  at  injustice,  heaven-storm- 
ing aspiration,  each  and  every  passion  of  the  breast 
of  man  is  in  these  vast  creations  raised  to  super- 
human proportions.  On  any  other  terms,  as  well 
expect  miniature  raised-map  reductions  of  the  Alps 
and  Himalayas  to  do  the  work  for  the  imagination 
of  their  roek-bastioned,  cloud-girt,  snow-and-ice- 
crowned  originals. 

Here  then,  first,  gets  its  overwhelming  expres- 
sion the  root-thought  of  Buddhism,  —  the  soul  up- 
lifted like  a  sunlit  peak  above  the  clouds  of  this 
storm-troubled  sphere.  Out  of  the  cloud-realm 
pour  down  on  all  who  dwell  below  the  dank,  driz- 
zling rains,  or  dart  the  lightning  forks  that  shatter 
earthly  good  in  ruin.  Above  them  lies  the  un- 
troubled ether.  And  toward  the  supreme  embodi- 
ment of  this  thought  in  the  Kamakura  Buddha  it 
would  seem  as  though  the  very  elements  of  earth- 
bred  havoc  had  conspired.  Once  the  statue  was 
covered  in  by  a  temple,  where,  penned  in  such  a 
petty,  finite  enclosure,  its  majestic  effect  must  have 
been  wholly  lost.  In  rolled  from  the  ocean  a  great 
earthquake  wave,  sweeping  away  every  vestige  of 
the  temple,  but  leaving  the  mighty,  dreaming 
Buddha  unstirred  from  his  base.  He  heard  it  not, 
felt  it  not,  but  brooded  on  in  impassive  calm.  And 
so,  century  on  century,  he  sits  under  the  open  sky, 
wrapt  in  his  infinite  peace.  The  rains  descend, 
the  lightnings  flash,  the  woods  rock  in  the  roaring 
gale,   dynasties  rise  and  fall,  Lilliputian   tourists 


BUDDHA  33 

from  the  far  West  peer  and  peep,  and  air  the  last 
fashions  of  a  trivial  world  around  his  mountain 
base.  But  he  is  oblivious  of  it  all.  It  cannot  j)en- 
etrate  Nirvana,  where  he  dwells  in  unbroken  rest. 

It  is  a  great  privilege  to  pass  even  a  brief  hour 
before  this  stupendous  symbol  of  the  faith  of  mil- 
lions of  one's  fellow  creatures,  and  to  be  led  by  it 
into  nearer  communion  with  one  of  the  vast  world- 
interpretations  of  the  problem  of  human  destiny. 
Indeed,  it  leaves  behind  in  the  heart  a  yearning  to 
spend,  in  a  kind  of  spiritual  retreat,  the  mornings 
of  a  whole  month,  meditating  in  such  a  presence. 
For  who  can  fail  to  recognize  how  immense  a  role 
the  essential  principle  of  Buddhism  has  played 
in  the  spiritual  history  of  reflective  and  sensitive 
minds  in  all  ages  and  in  all  lands. 

Heart-sick  weariness  over  the  dust-whirl  of  the 
finite,  —  its  petty  cares,  its  mosquito  stings,  its 
commonplace  vacuity,  its  fitful  fever  of  hectic  ex- 
citement, —  surely  one  does  not  need  to  cross  wide 
seas  to  encounter  minds  fretted  as  with  sharp  acids 
that  have  eaten  in  the  pattern  of  all  this  dreary 
scheme  of  human  life.  Those  there  are,  of  course, 
to  whom  nothing  is  tragic,  men,  and  women  too, 
incapable  alike  of  the  rapture  of  joy  or  the  agony 
of  grief  that  are  the  vital  substance  of  the  heavens 
and  the  hells  of  deeper  natures,  —  men  and  women 
who  could  sleep  heavily  through  Gethsemane,  or, 
should  they  chance  to  awaken  for  a  moment  and 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  his  agony, 
would,  at  their  deepest,  but  utter  their  sympathy 
in  an  "  Ah  I  really !     I  suppose  it  all  must  have 


34  JAPAN 

been  quite  a  disappointment ! "  and  then  resign 
themselves  to  sleep  again.  And,  as  the  world  goes, 
they  are  good,  average  people. 

Historically,  however,  and  with  all  deeper  and 
higher  minds,  this  shallow  or  stolid  complacency 
in  the  presence  of  the  suffering  of  human  life  has 
never  held  its  own.  At  the  root  of  Christian  mo- 
nasticism,  of  the  theology  of  the  mediaeval  Catholic 
church,  and  of  the  wide-spread  shapes  of  Calvinism 
and  Jansenism,  lies  an  element  always  kindred  to 
the  Buddhistic  despair  of  the  world,  —  the  deep- 
down  sense  that  the  world,  as  it  is,  exists  but  to 
be  denied  and  ultimately  delivered  from ;  while 
in  how  much  of  modern  philosophy  is  the  whole 
strain  pitched  in  the  same  minor  key  !  Hegel  but 
repeats  the  Buddha.  Nor  is  this  mere  theme  for 
regret.  Better  any  religion  or  philosophy,  however 
dark  the  colors  in  which  it  paints  the  actual,  than 
shallow  acquiescence  in  the  world  as  it  is,  with  no 
suffering  consciousness  of  its  evil,  nor  yearning  for 
redemption  from  its  appalling  mystery. 

Spite  of  all  that  lies  latent  behind  it,  or 
breaks  through  in  deeper  intuitions,  this 
world  is,  after  all,  a  very  finite,  bustling,  kaleido- 
scopic world.  Pure,  abstract  being  is  too  meta- 
physical, at  any  rate  for  tourists,  and  anon  must 
be  broken  up  by  the  prism  of  the  five  senses  into 
trees,  flowers,  society,  laughter,  lunch,  eager  curi- 
osity, and  keen-eyed  perception.  Emphatically  did 
we  feel  this  when  we  left  the  mighty,  brooding 
presence  and  took  once  more  to  our   jinrikishas. 


BACK  TO   THE  FINITE  35 

We  were  a  party  of  nine,  each  one  of  whom  had 
three  coolies,  two  to  run  tandem  in  front  and  one 
to  push  behind.  Thus,  in  single  file,  we  stretched 
out  in  double-quick  procession  several  hundred 
feet ;  and,  as  the  coolies  evidently  "  felt  their  oats," 
from  the  bowls  of  rice  they  had  eaten,  we  were 
soon  speeding  along  at  a  rattling  pace. 

What  exquisite  garden  culture  in  the  fields  on 
either  hand !  Every  inch  of  soil  how  made  to  tell, 
and  to  tell  in  two  to  three  crops  in  rotation !  The 
blooming  buckwheat,  the  polished  lanceolate  leaves 
of  the  Japanese  potato,  the  feathery-topped  carrots, 
—  never  a  weed  there  put  in  trace  of  competition 
in  any  struggle  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest  for  the 
pot  of  the  Japanese  peasant.  And  yet  how  tiny 
each  separate  little  patch  of  beans,  or  rice,  or  what 
not !  Doll  vegetable  gardens  they  looked.  Yes, 
everything  in  miniature  again !  Again,  infinite 
concentration  on  the  minutest  details,  —  the  irre- 
sistible shaping  force  that  necessitates  the  form 
everything  takes  in  Japan,  agriculture,  service, 
manners,  ornamentation,  lacquer  or  cloisonne,  carv- 
ing, painting.  On  pain  of  death,  with  starvation 
as  herald  of  the  doom,  no  one  may  dare  to  slight 
a  feature  of  his  work.  Yet  all  is  "  unresting,  un- 
hasting,"  to  a  degree  that,  spite  of  his  motto, 
Goethe  himself  could  never  reach  over  the  most 
elaborate  finish  of  a  poem. 

We  were  bound  for  Enoshima,  a  beautiful  pro- 
montory jutting  out  into  the  Pacific,  its  forest- 
crowned  top  the  seat  of  a  famous  temple,  and,  at 
its  base  and  climbing  its  slope,  a  fishing  village, 


36  JAPAN 

where  all  kinds  of  beautiful  objects  are  made  of  the 
shells,  seaweeds,  sea-urchins,  sponges,  and  corals 
gathered  from  the  deep.  Breaking  journey  only 
for  lunch  at  a  charming  half  tea-house,  half  hotel 
sanatorium,  where,  in  the  shelter  of  pine  groves 
sifting  out  any  chill  from  the  winds,  delicate  Jap- 
anese and  Europeans  seek  relief  from  the  more  ex- 
posed situation  of  Yokohama  bay,  we  started  out 
again  under  a  weight  of  obeisances  from  the  bevy 
of  girls  in  attendance  that  made  each  one  of  us 
the  equal  in  consciousness  with  the  sultan  of  the 
Sublime  Porte.  Whereas,  at  home,  we  Americans 
are  but  ordinary  "  sovereigns,"  and  no  one  of  the 
seventy  million  sovereigns  shows  a  jot  of  respect 
for  the  royal  insignia  of  the  others.  Of  course, 
as  became  good  republicans,  we  now  felt  corre- 
spondingly exalted. 

Of  all  the  "  coigns  of  vantage  "  for  a  phi- 
losopher, —  better  far  than  any  basket  sus- 
pended between  heaven  and  earth,  —  commend  me 
to  the  seat  of  a  jinrikisha.  No  other  such  throne 
of  contemplation  does  the  world  afford.  One  is 
utterly  alone.  No  care  for  himself  demands  atten- 
tion. No  voice  of  another  disturbs  the  silence  of 
his  meditation.  Fresh  material  of  observation  is 
opened  up  to  him  at  every  turn.  Far  from  having 
to  spin  spider-film  theories  out  of  the  bowels  of  his 
own  consciousness,  like  the  student  in  his  closet, 
eye  and  ear  are  on  the  alert  to  furnish  data  that 
can  be  relied  on  to  confirm  or  to  rebut  his  shaping 
generalizations. 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PERCH  37 

What  might  not  Immanuel  Kant  have  become 
under  these  conditions  !  At  first,  perhaps,  the  jin- 
rikisha  philosoplier  is  all  eye,  all  rapture.  "  Oh, 
the  ravishing-  beauty  of  this  land  !  "  he  constantly 
exclaims,  as  he  is  smoothly  whirled  high  above  the 
sea  along  a  road  from  which  he  looks  down  to  the 
beach  below  fringed  with  creamy  foam,  or  off  over 
the  dreamy  surface  of  the  water  to  bays  and  pro- 
montories and  mountain-crowned  islands,  steeped 
in  so  poetic  an  atmosphere.  Next,  to  turn  a  defile, 
the  road  curves  inland  a  mile  or  so,  where  orange- 
trees  hang  thick  with  fruit,  and  the  persimmons 
show  red  and  gold  among  the  foliage,  and  the  steep 
slopes  of  the  defiles  are  waving  with  the  feathery 
plumes  of  the  bamboo,  till  again,  the  cry,  "  The 
sea  !  the  sea!  " 

But  your  philosopher  on  his  perch  is  no  fool  of 
sense  and  time  and  space.  He  will  both  eat  his 
cake  and  have  it.  By  degrees  his  outer  eye  begins 
to  close  and  his  inner  eye  to  waken.  Then  inevi- 
tably looms  up  again  before  him  the  Nirvana-lapsed 
Buddha  of  the  morning,  and  he  begins  to  ruminate 
on  the  nature  of  the  century -long  influence  the 
mighty  dreamer  has  exerted  on  the  children  of  this 
mobile  race  about  one  on  every  hand.  So,  here  for 
his  speculations ! 

From  the  very  superficial  view  I  have  been  en- 
abled to  take  of  the  Japanese  people  of  to-day,  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  Kamakura  Buddha  over- 
expresses  the  character  of  the  influence  Buddhism 
has  exerted  on  them.  The  great  image  dates  back 
to  the  thirteenth  century,  to  the  times  in  which  the 


38  JAPAN 

original  Buddhistic  missionary  spirit  had  not  yet 
lost  its  first  vitality.  Far  more  of  India,  and  of 
its  deep  pessimistic  despair,  and  of  its  deep-down 
yearning  for  deliverance  through  simple  escape 
from  all  that  makes  up  to  it  the  weary  summary  of 
finite  existence,  is  manifest  in  the  statue  than  holds 
actually  true  of  the  Japanese  people  as  one  sees 
them  now.  They  are  not  an  Oriental  race,  in  the 
sense  of  a  race  dwelling  under  the  overpowering 
heat  and  among  the  jungles  infested  with  the  tigers, 
cobras,  scorpions,  and  malarias  of  Hindostan. 
Quite  as  much  are  they  a  northern  as  an  Oriental 
race,  and  latitude  plays  a  far  more  significant  part 
in  the  development  of  a  people  than  longitude. 

In  reality,  the  Japanese  are  more  nearly  allied 
in  temperament  to  the  French  than  to  the  inhab- 
itants of  India.  They  may  derive  their  main  reli- 
gious conceptions  from  India,  just  as  the  French 
derive  theirs  from  Judaea ;  but  they  have  modified 
them  profoundly.  After  all,  this  term  "  Eastern  " 
is  a  misleading  term.  It  implies  simply  east  from 
some  conventional  point,  say  Greenwich.  Every 
place  on  the  globe  is  east  from  some  other  place. 
But  this  fact  is  nothing  in  comparison  with  such  a 
question  as  that  of  north  or  south,  that  of  a  tem- 
perate or  of  a  tropical  climate.  Japan  is  breaking 
away  from  the  East  in  the  conventional  sense,  and 
is  coming  to  the  consciousness  that  her  future 
means  alliance  with  America  and  Europe,  with 
their  science,  politics,  philosophy,  and  ultimately 
with  their  more  hopeful  religion. 

All  this  signifies  that  the  Japanese  are  not  over- 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PERCH  39 

poweritigly  a  brooding,  dreamy  people,  but  an  alert, 
mobile,  impressionable,  at  once  artistic  and  practi- 
cal people.  They  dwell  in  one  of  tlie  loveliest  and 
most  diversified  countries  in  the  world,  with  coast 
lines  as  changeful  as  those  of  Greece  and  its  archi- 
pelagoes, with  a  flora  of  the  most  marvelous  variety, 
with  mountains,  lakes,  forests,  and  meadow  lands 
of  extraordinary  beauty.  All  this  they  enjoy  to 
the  full  with  a  naive,  childlike,  unreflecting  delight. 
They  do  not  seek  the  forest  as  the  Buddha  did,  to 
get  out  of  the  glare  and  heat  of  every-day  reality, 
to  be  free  to  brood  undisturbed,  to  have  all  the  dis- 
tracting multiplicity  of  light  and  color  and  form 
quenched  in  twilight  obscurity,  that  the  inward 
alone  may  possess  the  mind.  Rather  is  their  de- 
light sought  in  the  fascinating  diversity  of  the  out- 
ward and  the  finite.  The  tint  of  a  cherry  blossom, 
the  delicacy  of  a  bit  of  moss,  the  graceful  curve  of 
a  spray  of  woodbine,  the  dart  of  a  bird  at  a  but- 
terfly, or  the  motion  of  a  fish  in  a  pool,  —  these 
they  prize  above  all  the  abstractions  in  the  world 
or  beyond  the  world.  To  catch,  as  it  were,  on  the 
wing  the  living  sj)irit  of  all  these,  to  reproduce 
them  at  once  with  fidelity  and  freedom  in  metal, 
wood,  ivory,  embroidery,  dress-pattern,  sketch  in 
color,  —  to  make  the  most  ordinary  household  uten- 
sils reminders  of  them,  and  fragrant  with  their 
beauty  and  perfume,  —  just  here  lies  the  attitude 
of  the  Japanese  mind  toward  nature. 

Be  it  confessed,  the  profounder  questions  of  hu- 
man life  and  destiny  have  in  no  age  taken  a  strong 
speculative  hold  on  this  people;  while   the  more 


40  JAPAN 

practical  and  superficial  ones  have  been  marvelously 
resolved.  It  is  in  vain  that  one  will  seek  among 
them  for  any  deep  original  thinkers  on  social,  phi- 
losophical, ethical,  or  religious  subjects.  From 
China,  with  India  behind  it,  they  have  imported 
their  theology,  moral  and  social  systems,  manners, 
and  art  in  its  myriad  forms.  These  they  have 
modified  in  accordance  with  their  own  social  needs, 
exquisite  taste,  and  placidity  of  temperament. 
With  them,  the  awful  Buddhistic  temple  of  India 
becomes  a  miracle  of  fanciful  and  intricate  lacquer 
work ;  while  the  superb  groves  of  cryptomerias, 
pines,  and  camphor-trees  surrounding  those  tem- 
ples are  the  happy  play-grounds  of  thousands  of 
children  and  of  throngs  of  merry-making  pilgrims. 
None  the  less,  in  just  the  same  sense  that  Europe 
is  Aryanized  Christian,  so  is  Japan  still  thoroughly 
Buddhistic  in  attitude,  the  present  rage  for  Herbert 
Spencer  notwithstanding.  Like  all  Oriental  peoples, 
the  Japanese  are  penetrated  with  the  sense  of  the 
evanescence  of  life,  that  it  is  a  vapor  which  vanishes 
away,  a  bubble  that  bursts  and  is  gone.  Still,  it 
is  a  beautiful  bubble,  iridescent  with  rainbow  colors 
and  bright  with  a  thousand  charming  reflections. 
Even  if  not  that,  at  least  it  can  be  borne  with  quiet 
patience  or  ignored  with  quiet  indifference.  Any- 
how, it  is  a  small  matter,  not  worth  breaking  the 
heart  over,  if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  heart. 
Beyond  the  bourne,  the  ancestors  live  on  in  some 
vague,  impersonal  way.  Burn  incense  to  them  and 
plant  flowers  on  their  graves,  to  keep  alive  the 
dreamy  sentiment.     Soon  will  the  like  be  done  for 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PERCH  41 

us.  Meanwhile,  there  are  careless,  pretty  children 
to  play  with,  cherry  Llossoms,  wistarias,  lotus 
flowers  wherewith  mildly  to  intoxicate  the  senses, 
crowds  of  neighbors  to  chat  and  gossip  with,  charm- 
ing designs  to  work  out  in  w'ood,  ivory,  and  metal, 
"  unresting,  unhasting "  work  to  keep  the  mind 
diverted  from  worry,  with,  crown  of  all,  retirement 
from  the  cares  of  life  at  fifty,  when  the  children  will 
look  out  for  us  ! 

Such  is  the  creed,  even  though,  as  with  all  creeds, 
sharp  and  stern  inroads  are  made  on  it  by  the 
tougher  experiences  of  life.  But  the  mistake  of 
mistakes  is  it  to  think  that  creeds  effect  nothing 
because  they  are  unavailing  to  effect  everything. 
They  are  an  atmosphere,  tonic  or  depressing,  uncon- 
sciously breathed  in  at  every  inhalation.  To  "  break 
up  the  tables  with  a  laugh  "  because,  forsooth,  the 
Roman  Stoic  sometimes  cut  a  wry  face  over  an 
agonizing  toothache  is  a  very  shallow  way  of  dis- 
missing to  limbo  the  value  of  a  shape  of  faith  that 
put  iron  into  the  blood  of  millions.  All  great 
world-ideals.  Christian,  Buddhist,  Stoic,  Epicu- 
rean, Mohammedan,  are  working  forces  of  incalcu- 
lable range  and  power. 


III. 

For  lack  of  space  I  must  pass  very  rapidly 
over  the  impressions  left  by  an  excursion  of 
some  days  to  Miyanosliita,  Hakone  lake,  and  over 
the  Ten  Province  Pass  to  Atami  on  the  seashore, 
at  which  last  point  even  Sir  Edwin  Arnold's  multi- 
tudinous command  of  gushing  vocables  gave  out, 
and  he  was  forced  to  lie  down  and  pant  in  breath- 
less incapacity  of  further  expression.  The  excursion 
was  poetry  from  beginning  to  end.  As  nobody  ever 
looks  out  the  position  of  any  region  on  the  map, 
it  is  perhaps  superfluous  to  add  that  the  peninsula 
of  Idzu,  on  which  Atami  lies,  is  south  and  west  of 
Yohohama  bay,  and  that  the  Hakone  region  back 
of  it  is  mountainous.  Natures  there  are,  however, 
that  must  get  vent  topographically  or  die. 

To  mount  from  Yumoto  to  Miyanosliita,  an 
ascent  of  1400  feet,  our  jinrikisha  runners 
did  the  five  miles  of  steep  uphill  work  inside  of 
fifty  minutes,  including  a  momentary  stop  for  a  sip 
of  tea,  generally  their  only  stimulant.  We  had  three 
coolies  each,  and  all  through  the  awful  pull  they 
smiled  like  cherubs.  "  Let  the  galled  jade  wince, 
our  withers  are  un wrung,"  was  snapped  out  from 
every  elastic  muscle.  And  yet  we  Americans  insist 
that  a  vegetable   diet   is   unequal    to   imparting 


BAMBOO  GRASS  43 

strength.  These  fellows,  moreover,  have  intellect 
enough  left  to  refresh  themselves  after  their  tough 
work  by  playing  chess,  that  most  strenuous  of  re- 
laxations for  all  but  Napoleon  Bonaparte. 

As  the  road  wound  along  a  picturesque 
mountain  gorge,  far  below  at  the  bottom  of 
which  was  a  leaping  river,  broken  b}"^  frequent  water- 
falls whose  white  foam  shone  out  in  relief  against 
the  dense  foliage,  gradually  there  opened  upon  us 
the  higher  slopes  of  the  mountains,  as  they  rose 
clear  from  the  forest,  clad  in  a  pure  naked  beauty 
of  olive-green  that  was  a  fresh  revelation  in  Japa- 
nese scenery.  These  slopes  stretched  as  wide-rang- 
ing and  unbroken  as  the  pasture  lands  of  the  Aljis, 
and  yet  in  color  offered  such  a  contrast.  "  Sym- 
phonies in  olive-green,  with  infinite  variations  in 
light  and  shade,  on  the  same  theme,"  painter 
Wynants  would  have  called  them.  Yet  as  we 
feasted  in  delight  on  their  poetic  beauty,  we  could 
make  out  no  herds  of  grazing  cattle  or  flocks  of 
nibbling  sheep.  None  the  less,  as  Wordsworth 
puts  it,  these  seeming  pastures  were  an  "  appetite," 
awakening  in  us  vague  but  delicious  reminiscences 
of  happy  grazing  days  in  bygone  stages  of  being. 
Why  should  not  living  sentient  cows  and  sheep  of 
to-day  enjoy  the  feast  along  with  us  ;  they  chewing 
the  cud  of  the  juicy  grass  and  we  the  cud  of  its 
jesthetic  charm  ? 

It  seemed  a  wrong.  It  was  a  wrong.  The  "  sym- 
phony in  olive-green  "  was  of  bamboo  grass,  whose 
flinty    silicious   sheathing   cuts    the  coats   of  the 


44  JAPAN 

stomachs  of  the  countless  herds  it  might  otherwise 
nourish.  Yet  Japan  is  three  fourths  mountains, 
and,  in  certain  immense  regions,  the  bamboo  grass 
is  everywhere.  But  for  it,  the  hills  might  be  as 
white  with  flocks  and  as  rich  in  the  browns  and 
reds  of  dappled  cattle  as  Wales  or  Scotland.  A 
high  price  this  to  pay  for  simple  beauty,  but  oh, 
how  beautiful  it  is  !  What  a  light,  too,  it  cast  on 
an  enforced  vegetable  diet.  Free  will  is  not  so 
absolute  a  thing  as  we  are  apt  to  take  it  for. 

Should  I  attempt  to  describe  the  Fujiya 
hotel  in  Miyanoshita,  it  would  only  be 
to  swoon  like  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  before  Atami. 
Once  in  a  while,  even  in  this  imj^erfect  sphere,  is 
the  ideal  reached,  and  the  ideal  is  the  ideal,  the 
standard  of  perfection,  alike  whether  in  hotel, 
poem,  or  strain  of  music.  Not  only  have  the 
Japanese  sent  abroad  their  brightest  young  intel- 
lects to  study  medicine  and  philosophy  in  Germany, 
military  and  naval  science  in  America  and  England, 
engineering  in  Switzerland,  but  wherever  a  culinary 
mind  of  the  highest  order  has  emerged  above  the 
average  level,  they  have  dispatched  it  swift  to 
Paris,  to  master  the  subtlest  secrets  of  the  white- 
aproned,  paper-capped  artists  presiding  over  the 
kitchens  of  that  famed  metropolis.  Again  a  straw, 
but  a  straw  that  shows  which  way  the  wind  blows. 
Let  no  one  hope  to  understand  the  Japanese 
apart  from  a  study  of  the  instinctive  imitativeness, 
the  infinite  pliability,  with  which  they  adopt  all 
varieties  of  new  ideas  and  lift  them  to  perfection. 


VOLCANOES  AND  CLEANLINESS  45 

Beautiful,  however,  in  all  its  appointments  as 
was  the  Fujiya  hotel,  it  was  in  its  service  that  lay 
its  crowning  charm.  This  service  was  wholly  in 
the  hands  of  the  daintiest  of  miniature  girls,  every 
flowered  pattern  of  whose  crepe  dresses  and  every 
hue  of  whose  silk  belts  seemed  to  have  been  se- 
lected by  a  presiding  artist.  Early  each  morning 
came  a  tap  on  the  door,  in  would  glide  a  little 
fairy  with  a  tray  of  coifee  and  toast  in  one  hand, 
and  over  the  arm  a  long,  loose  bathing-gown. 
The  tray  she  would  deposit  on  a  little  table  by  the 
bedside,  and  then  with  a  sunny  smile  lift  a  lump 
of  sugar  for  the  cup.  Another  lump  ?  The  smile 
beamed  more  luminously.  Still  another  ?  It  was 
diffused  over  the  whole  face.  The  temptation  was 
almost  irresistible  to  exhaust  the  whole  sugar  bowl, 
to  see  how  far  human  ecstasy  could  go.  Then 
would  she  withdraw  and  wait  outside  till,  arrayed 
in  the  loose  flowered  kimono,  you  were  ready  to 
have  her  pilot  the  way  for  you  to  the  bath. 

Just  as  the  Japanese  are  vegetarians  and 
owe  it  to  the  bamboo  grass,  so  are  they  the 
cleanest  people  in  the  world,  and  owe  it  to  vol- 
canoes. How  would  Buckle,  the  original  inventor 
of  the  relations  between  human  history  and  physi- 
cal environment,  have  leaped  with  joy  to  find  him- 
self stared  in  the  face  in  Japan  by  such  confirma- 
tions of  his  theory.  Until  the  advent  in  Europe 
and  America  of  that  last  infliction  of  human  woes, 
the  pkmiber,  —  with  his  elaborate  system  of  over- 
head  cistern,   water-back,  boiler,  and   circulating 


46  JAPAN 

pipes,  —  nobody  ever  thought  of  bathing ;  while  in 
Japan,  on  the  other  hand,  Nature  had  for  thou- 
sands of  years  been  carrying  on  the  whole  elabo- 
rate process  of  supplying  her  children  with  boiling 
water  without  a  word  of  advice,  or  a  bill,  from  so 
unnecessary  a  functionary  as  the  man  of  lead.  The 
rain-clouds  were  the  overhead  cisterns,  the  volcano 
was  the  furnace,  the  subterranean  springs  were  the 
boiler,  the  running  streams  were  the  circulating 
pipes.  Not  that  every  portion  equally  of  Japan 
had  a  volcano  at  command  to  heat  its  water  and 
fill  its  bathtubs.  Still,  they  were  plentiful  enough 
to  introduce  on  the  widest  scale  the  luxury,  and 
to  make  it  the  custom,  till  now  every  peasant  in  the 
land  has  his  tub,  with  natural  or  artifical  volcano- 
attachment,  in  which  he  boils  himself  daily  till 
fatigue  or  rheumatism  are  dissolved  away.  Who 
after  this  will  say  that  foreign  travel  is  not  im- 
mensely improving  in  the  vast  generalizations  it 
opens  up  before  the  reflective  mind  ? 

It  is  a  day's  journey  from  Miyanoshita  to 
Atami  over  the  Ten  Province  Pass.  Too 
steep,  the  climb  and  descent,  for  the  jinrikisha, 
one  now  betakes  himself  to  the  kago,  a  palanquin 
with  long  bamboo  poles  borne  on  the  shoulders  of 
four  coolies.  It  is  useless  to  attempt  long  descrip- 
tions of  scenery.  Enough  that  the  way  leads  over 
the  backbone  of  the  Idzu  promontory,  waving 
with  vast  stretches  of  pkuny  bamboo  grass,  and 
looking  down  on  either  side  to  the  sea  breaking  in 
curves   of  foam   on  the  beaches.     Ten  Provinces 


THE   TEN  PROVINCE  PASS  47 

are  commanded  by  the  eye,  while  over  them  all 
Fujisan  rears  its  superb  snow-crowned  cone.  Wise 
is  the  mountain  whose  "  soul  is  as  a  star  and  dwells 
apart,"  One  Dante,  one  Milton,  one  Fujisan ! 
Atami  I  will  not  venture  to  picture.  The  fear  of 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold  is  before  my  eyes. 


rv. 

Fifty  miles  or  more  north  of  Tokyo,  in  a 
mountain  region  of  peaks  six  to  eight  thou- 
sand feet  in  height,  lie  the  famous  memorial  tem- 
ples of  Nikko,  perhaps  the  most  sumptuously 
adorned  of  any  in  Japan.  Before  undertaking  to 
say  a  word  about  them,  let  me  make  a  brief  allu- 
sion to  the  past  religious  history  of  Japan. 

The  day  was  when  the  Buddhist  church  played 
the  same  great  role  in  Japan  that  the  Roman 
Catholic  played  in  mediaeval  Europe.  Just  as 
Italy,  Sixain,  France,  Germany,  and  England  were 
covered  with  monasteries,  abbeys,  and  countless 
ecclesiastical  foundations  by  the  one,  so  was  it  here 
in  Japan  by  the  other.  The  same  principles  of 
human  nature  were  at  work  in  either  case.  Thou- 
sands and  tens  of  thousands  were  driven  by  the 
turbulence  and  misery  of  ages  of  domestic  warfare 
to  seek  refuge  in  the  church.  Mikados,  set  aside 
by  more  powerful  rivals  or  voluntarily  abdicating 
in  sheer  world- weariness,  shaved  their  heads  and 
assumed  the  garb  of  the  monk.  Powerful  barons, 
heart-sick  at  last  over  their  lives  of  violence  and 
cruelty,  hid  themselves  in  penitence  in  the  cloister. 
Broken  traders,  peasants  brought  to  ruin,  women 
blighted  in  their  affections,  refined  and  tender 
natures  of  all  kinds  that  could  not  bear  the  stress 


AN  HISTORICAL  GLIMPSE  49 

of  the  outside  world,  betook  themselves  to  this  one 
haven  of  rest.  Riches  poured  in.  Enormous  grants 
of  land  were  made  by  princes  and  feudal  lords. 
Temples  were  built  by  them  in  atonement  for  their 
sins.  Theological  schools  were  founded  in  count- 
less numbers ;  while  the  Peter's  pence  of  the  poor 
amounted,  in  the  aggregate,  to  enormous  sums  of 
steady  revenue.  Then  followed  the  same  results 
that  were  witnessed  in  Europe.  Abbots  and  bish- 
ops became  powerful  forces  in  politics  and  in  actual 
warfare.  Ignorant  and  ferocious  swarms  of  monks 
made  themselves  the  terror  of  whole  counties. 
Rival  theological  schools  rent  the  land  into  dis- 
cordant sects  in  the  advocacy  of  hair-splitting  met- 
aphysical distinctions.  Veritable  sages  and  saints 
appeared.  But  the  fatality  of  the  Japanese  mind, 
•with  its  imitative  rather  than  original  characteris- 
tics, manifested  itself  through  all.  No  new  con- 
tributions of  any  spiritual  depth  were  added  to 
the  imported  creed.  No  monumental  works  of  the- 
ology like  the  "  Summa  "  of  Saint  Thomas  Aquinas, 
no  rich  hymnology,  no  treasuries  of  devout  thought 
like  the  "  Imitation "  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  no 
noble  manuals  of  worship  to  compare  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  Missal  or  the  English  Prayer- 
Book,  were  the  return  to  the  world  for  such  lavish 
outpourings  of  the  common  means. 

On  every  hand  to-day  stand  these  truly  colossal 
ecclesiastical  foundations.  They  cover  the  moun- 
tain-sides with  their  square  miles  of  temples,  dor- 
mitories, groves,  and  gardens.  They  have  their 
great  ranges  of  state  apartments  for  abbots,  bish- 


50  JAPAN 

ops,  princes,  and  feudal  lords.  They  bear  witness 
to  an  age  when  they  must  have  yielded  substantial 
satisfaction  to  the  millions  who  otherwise  would 
not  have  maintained  them.  Not  alone  did  they 
allay  superstitious  fears  and  furnish  retreats  to 
men  weary  of  the  world.  They  inaugurated  sys- 
tems of  festivals  and  pilgrimages  which  were  the 
happy  holiday  experiences  of  the  masses  of  the 
people,  in  whose  minds  were  at  the  same  time  sown 
the  seeds  of  instruction  in  the  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil.  Moreover,  the  fundamental  theological 
view  impressed  was  at  the  last  remove  from  the 
agnosticism  of  the  original  Indian  Buddhism. 
Amida,  the  supreme,  self-conscious  Deity,  had  be- 
come incarnate  in  the  Buddha  to  redeem  mankind 
from  suffering.  It  was  not  the  lone,  isolated 
Buddha,  it  was  Amida  Buddha,  the  divine-human, 
that  had  conquered  and  triumphed  over  the  realms 
of  misery,  and  who,  in  infinite  compassion,  showed 
the  way  of  blessedness.  Nor  was  this  all.  To  the 
popular  imagination,  at  least,  were  opened  up 
visions  of  a  heaven  bright  with  hierarchies  of 
angels,  and  of  a  hell  terrible  with  the  torments  of 
the  wicked,  as  many  a  picture  in  the  temples  re- 
veals, even  though  these  supernatural  visions  never 
took  such  hold  on  the  vaguely  dreaming  minds  of 
the  Japanese  as  on  the  minds  of  more  highly  vital- 
ized and  passionate  races. 

Many  and  beautiful,  too,  were  the  parables  and 
legends  thus  spread  abroad  through  the  hearts  of 
the  peasantry.  Let  me  give  one  of  them,  —  the 
Japanese  version  of  the  poor  widow  in  the  Gospels, 


THE  NIKKO  GROVES  51 

whose  copper  mite  cast  into  the  treasury  out- 
weighed, in  the  sight  of  God,  the  gokl  of  the  rich 
man.  Be  it  premised,  for  the  full  understanding 
of  the  story,  that  the  avenues  leading  to  the  tem- 
ples in  Japan  are  lined  with  high,  monumental 
stone  or  bronze  lanterns,  many  of  them  of  great 
cost.  The  touching  parable  runs  thus  :  A  certain 
rich  man  presented  a  temple  with  a  hundred  fine 
lanterns,  while  a  poor  woman,  who  had  no  money 
to  give,  cut  off  her  hair,  and,  selling  it,  bought  a 
cheaj)  and  humble  one.  After  they  had  all  been 
set  in  place,  they  were  one  night  lighted  up  at  a 
festival.  Then  the  god  sent  a  powerful  wind  ;  and, 
lo !  all  the  hundred  lanterns  of  the  rich  man  were 
blown  out,  while  the  poor  widow's  burned  bright 
and  clear  through  the  whole  night.  Thus  did  the 
god  bear  witness  that  the  liberality  of  the  heart 
was  the  one  thing  precious  in  his  sight. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  enormous 
spaces  and  superb  groves  surrounding  great 
numbers  of  the  temples.  It  would  be  an  ample 
return  for  circumnavigating  the  globe  to  find  one's 
self  wandering  for  a  single  day  under  the  awful 
shade  and  overpowering  height  and  spread  of  the 
giant  cryptomerias,  pines,  firs,  and  cypresses  that 
cover  the  whole  sacred  mountain  on  which  lie  the 
Nikko  temples.  Where  the  great  avenues  are  cut 
through  them,  with  their  frequent  rises  of  stately 
flights  of  stone  steps,  the  century-old  trunks,  lif ting- 
in  enormous  girth  to  a  towering  height,  present 
a  scene  of  monumental  grandeur  that  Karnak  in 


52  JAPAN 

Egypt  cannot  surpass.  It  Is  arboreal  architec- 
ture on  so  stupendous  a  scale  that  the  aisles  of 
a  Cologne  cathedral  dwindle  into  insignificance 
in  comparison.  All  the  ancient  Druid  in  one's 
blood  comes  out ;  and  his  life,  long  centuries  back, 
when  the  groves  were  the  only  temples,  revives 
and  swallows  up  the  present  and  the  intervening 
past.  Half  haunted  did  I  feel  with  a  strange 
fancy  that  here  was  the  actual  heaven  to  which  the 
devout,  nature-loving  spirit  of  Asa  Gray,  our  own 
peerless  botanist,  had  been  sent  after  its  beautiful 
life  on  earth.  How  would  he  worship  in  such  a 
presence ! 

Far  more  in  these  groves  than  in  any  of  the  tem- 
ples does  the  inmost  spirit  of  the  Buddhistic  Nir- 
vana seem  to  express  itself.  "  Come  unto  me,  all 
ye  that  are  weary  and  heavy-laden,  that  are  lonely, 
world-weary,  sin-sick,  and  I  will  give  you  rest !  " 
is  the  voiceless  invitation  breathed  abroad.  Quietly 
a  strain  comes  stealing  into  the  mind  like  that  of 
Wordsworth's  lines  :  "  Thought  was  not :  in  enjoy- 
ment it  expired.  Wrapped  in  that  still  communion 
that  transcends  the  imperfect  offices  of  prayer  and 
praise,  his  soul  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 
that  made  it :  it  was  blessedness  and  love."  Ah ! 
could  one  but  spend  a  long,  full  summer  among 
the  groves  of  Nikko,  he  would  "  come  "  to  his  own 
deep,  inward  self,  healed  of  his  wounds,  life's  fitful 
fever  quenched,  the  power  of  the  world  over  him 
dissolved  away  forever. 


THE  NIKKO   TEMPLES  53 

Far  less  is  It  beauty  or  dignity  of  form  than 
magnificence  of  ornamentation  that  im- 
presses one  in  a  Japanese  temple.  Given  a  column, 
a  frieze,  an  open-work  cloister,  the  beam  of  an  over- 
hanging gable,  and  the  Japanese  artist  has  merely 
something  to  start  with.  We  are  accustomed  at 
home  to  go  wild  over  a  piece  of  their  exquisite  lac- 
quer-work. But  here,  in  many  a  temple,  the  whole 
interior  —  columns,  ceiling,  altar,  floor,  images, 
shrines,  candelabra  —  is  one  regal  jewel-box  of  lac- 
quer and  gold,  the  entire  splendor  above  reflected, 
as  in  a  limjjid  pool,  in  the  mirror  of  the  lacquered 
floor  beneath.  In  many  an  instance  the  effect  of 
the  whole  is  one  of  such  gorgeous  yet  harmonious 
glory  that  the  mind  is  absorbed  in  the  spectacle  as  a 
beautiful  unity ;  but  this  is  not  the  abiding  feeling, 
as  in  the  grander  orders  of  architecture,  where  the 
structural  character  is  such  that  the  whole  is  greater 
than  the  parts.  In  the  vast  majority  of  these  tem- 
ples the  case  is  reversed,  and  the  parts  are  greater 
than  the  whole.  Soon  you  find  yourself  kneeling 
down  to  admire  the  delicate  work  on  a  bronze,  or 
marveling  at  the  exquisite  designs  in  red  and  gold 
on  a  lacquered  shrine,  or  lost  in  delight  over  the 
flowers  and  arabesque  work  in  panel  after  panel  of 
the  ceiling.  Neither  would  it  be  fair  to  the  genius 
of  a  people  who  express  themselves  in  detail  rather 
than  in  mass  to  do  otherwise.  Not  so  much  one 
commanding  mind  as  myriads  of  exquisitely  delicate 
craftsmen,  you  feel,  have  wrought  this  beautiful  re- 
sult. For  years  on  years,  in  such  structures  as  the 
mortuary  temples  of  leyasu  aud  lemitsu  in  Nikko, 


54  JAPAN 

thousands  of  the  most  artistic,  aesthetic-fibred, 
patient,  consummately  skilled  workmen  the  world 
ever  saw  were  kept  unintermittingly  at  their  task. 
Thus,  inevitably,  the  mind  becomes  overpowered  by 
the  simple  historical  fact,  and  says :  "  Well,  if  I 
cannot  see  the  woods  for  the  trees,  then  I  will  see 
the  trees  by  themselves.  There  is  a  whole  world 
of  cunning  beauty  in  their  bark,  their  clinging 
vines,  their  lichens,  their  buds,  leaves,  and  flowers  !  " 
It  is  the  work,  then,  of  a  rarely  endowed  people, 
instead  of  the  work  of  a  few  exceptional  men  of 
genius,  that  one  admires  in  these  temples.  The 
impression  they  leave  on  the  mind  is  far  more  artis- 
tic than  religious.  The  Japanese  mind,  be  it  re- 
peated, is  the  perfection  of  the  finite.  It  has  no 
brooding,  infinite  element  in  it,  and  expresses  little 
of  this  in  its  architecture.  Now  and  then  an  image 
of  the  Buddha  is  so  beautiful  in  its  serene  peace,  is 
so  lost  in  supersensuous  contemplation,  that  you 
feel  yourself  in  a  Catholic  church  in  Italy,  with  an 
image  of  the  redeeming  Saviour  before  you.  But 
this  was  a  type  already  fixed  in  India  ages  before  it 
reached  Japan.  No,  the  distinctly  Japanese  contri- 
bution to  their  temples  is  that  of  the  grace,  variety, 
charm,  joy,  of  the  world  of  birds,  vines,  flowers. 
Is  not  a  peacock  or  a  pheasant  a  glory  of  iris- 
hued  color?  Is  not  a  spray  of  cherry  blossoms  a 
ravishment  to  the  eye  ?  Is  not  a  school  of  fishes, 
as  they  swirl  in  graceful  curves  through  the  water, 
something  to  arrest  and  fascinate  and  make  one 
gaze  forever  ?  To  work  out  these  ideas,  with  naive 
delight,  in  the  most  exquisitely  wrought,  colored, 


THE  NIKKO  TEMPLES  55 

and  gilded  wood-carving;  in  the  chasing  of  every 
brass  jointure  of  a  beam ;  in  the  superb  gilded 
candelabi'a  of  lotus  leaves  and  flowers ;  in  gold- 
based  screens  covered  with  chrysanthemums,  wistaria 
vines,  wrens,  herons  —  here  lies  the  work  in  which 
the  Japanese  are  as  happy  and  at  home  as  children 
reveling  in  the  meadows  and  woods  of  springtime. 

If,  then,  I  were  called  upon  to  express  my  own 
personal  feeling  as  to  the  impression  wrought  by 
the  actual  temples  of  Japan  in  comparison  with 
that  of  the  groves,  avenues,  and  quiet,  secluded 
gardens  environing  them,  it  would  be  in  some- 
what the  following  fashion  that  I  should  have  to 
set  to  work.  I  enjoy  immensely  visiting  many 
a  temple ;  but  I  enjoy  it  very  much  as  I  should 
visiting  a  transfigured  and  sublimated  curio  shop, 
exquisitely  harmonized  in  its  details.  I  dote  on 
lacquer.  I  am  as  crazy  as  any  woman  over  em- 
broideries. My  finger-tips  itch  with  kleptomania 
at  the  sight  of  choice  bronzes.  Screens  painted 
with  herons,  wild  geese,  cheriy  blossoms,  and  wis- 
taria vines,  delight  me  with  their  life  and  grace ; 
and  as  for  a  polished  floor,  —  a  Kmpid  pool  for  the 
exquisite  reflection  of  ceiling,  gilded  pillars,  magni- 
ficent altar,  —  I  could  drown  myself  like  Narcissus 
in  it.  Over  the  gilded  and  painted  oijen-work, 
wood-carvings  of  flowers,  peacocks,  cranes,  doves, 
monkeys,  dragons,  and  griffins,  I  could  delight  to 
linger,  in  such  places  as  Nikko,  Tokyo,  or  Kyoto,  a 
couple  of  hours  every  morning  for  a  month,  examin- 
ing them  bit  by  bit.  But  the  interiors  are,  as  a 
rule,  too  small  to  produce  any  overpowering  effect ; 


66  JAPAN. 

and  no  gi'eat  central  religious  idea  dominates  the 
infinite  variety  and  contrariety  of  the  details. 
Indeed,  very  often  I  feel  a  half-humorous  smile 
playing  over  my  face  when,  after  a  season  of  real 
communion  with  a  serenely  beautiful  Buddha  seated 
on  the  lotus  leaves  above  the  altar,  his  eyes  closed, 
his  face  suffused  with  a  sense  of  ineffable  peace 
in  interior  withdrawal  from  the  world  of  sense,  I 
suddenly  become  aware  of  all  the  splendid  elabora- 
tion of  minute  and  varied  detail  around  me.  Has 
the  inwardly  Illuminated  One,  after  all,  closed  his 
eyes  a-purpose,  that  he  may  shut  out  the  bewilder- 
ing distraction  of  the  finite  multiplicity  of  his  own 
temple,  to  lose  himself  in  the  oneness  of  the  immu- 
table and  unchanging  ? 

In  accordance  with  this  spirit  in  which  they 
are  conceived  and  adorned,  the  temples  in 
Japan  are  something  widely  different  in  use  and 
purpose  from  the  churches  in  Europe  and  America. 
Set,  as  they  are,  in  the  midst  of  immense  spaces 
and  superb  groves,  they  furnish  the  parks,  the  play- 
grounds, the  places  for  picnics  and  pilgrimages  for 
the  people.  Temple  and  tea-house  meet  and  kiss 
one  another.  The  ceremonial  worship  is  conducted 
by  the  priest,  while  the  men  and  women  who,  as 
devotees,  come  up  to  say  their  prayers  are,  as  a  gen- 
eral rule,  quickly  through  with  it.  They  clap  their 
hands  to  notify  the  god  they  are  there,  mumble  a 
few  unintelligible  repetitions  of  words  the  original 
meaning  of  which  is  now  lost,  then  clap  their  hands 
again  to  notify  the  god  that  they  have  done  and  he 


POPULAR   USE  OF  THE   TEMPLES         57 

may  go,  and  themselves  adjourn  for  rice,  tea,  and 
cliat.  Indeed,  immense  numbers  of  tlie  prayers  are 
simply  written  out  for  the  worshipers  on  slips  of 
paper,  and  then  hung  on  the  gratings  of  shrines. 
So  far  does  this  go  that  in  many  of  the  Shinto 
temples  the  awful-looking  war-gods  and  gods  of 
thunder  and  hurricane  who  guard  the  entrance  are 
seen  literally  covered  with  innumerable  spit-balls 
thrown  by  devotees  who  have  first  chewed  ujs  their 
paper  prayers  and  then  discharged  them  with  force 
enough  to  make  them  stick  to  nose,  chest,  or  leg. 
Thus  have  the  worshipers  attested  that  they 
"  mean  business,"  and  that  the  god  shall  have  no 
excuse  for  pleading  he  did  not  know  they  had  been 
there.  The  earnestness  is  certainly  praiseworthy, 
only,  one  would  think,  a  little  at  the  cost  of  devout 
reverence. 

Very  much  of  the  same  piece  with  the  exter- 
nality, rather  than  spiritual  inwardness,  of  all  this, 
is  the  impression  made  by  certain  immense  octago- 
nal structures,  filled  with  all  the  writings  of  Bud- 
dhist literature  and  made  to  revolve  on  a  kind  of 
capstan  fitted  with  handspikes,  ons  sees  in  many  a 
temple.  The  most  ignorant  peasant  who  turns  this 
once  round  is  entitled  to  the  same  "merit"  as 
though  he  had  read  every  one  of  the  sacred  writ- 
ings stored  within.  One  cannot  but  feel  what  a 
labor-saving  device  for  professors  it  would  be  if  at 
least  one  of  these  could  be  imported  and  set  up 
in  each  theological  school  in  America.  A  single 
turn  of  the  capstan,  and,  lo  !  the  stupidest  fellow  at 
Princeton  or  Andover  has  got  all  the  good  out  of 


68  JAPAN 

"  Edwards  on  the  Will,"  Hegel's  "  Philosophy  of 
Religion,"  or  Lotze's  "  Microcosmos  "  !  The  whole 
cruel  innuendo  would  at  once  be  taken  out  of  the 
old  Greek  saw,  "  There  is  no  royal  road  to  know- 
ledge." Still,  historically,  one  cannot  but  be 
touched  at  the  loving  and  pitiful  spirit  for  the  ig- 
norant and  disinherited  manifest  in  so  many  of 
these  mechanical  devices  for  bridging  the  painful 
abyss  between  the  learned  and  the  simple,  the  re- 
cluse student  and  the  treadmill  toiler.  And,  after 
all,  how  many  an  arid  pedant,  who  passes  muster 
for  the  "  merits "  of  whole  libraries  devoured  by 
him,  has  all  his  life  only  been  working  the  caj)stan 
of  just  such  a  machine. 

The  more  one  journeys  about  Japan,  the 
more  is  he  impressed  with  the  unique  sim- 
plicity of  the  type  of  civilization  it  presents.  Let 
him  once  grasp  a  few  of  the  fundamental  ideas  that 
underlie  it,  and  he  has  the  key  that  interprets 
nearly  everything  before  his  eyes.  Of  the  bewil- 
dering complexity  of  European  civilization  there  is 
little  to  perplex  the  mind.  Leaving  out  the  changes 
wrought  in  the  last  thirty  years,  the  same  plough 
that  turned  up  the  soil  one  thousand  years  ago 
turns  it  up  to-day,  the  same  junk  that  furrowed  the 
waters  a  thousand  years  ago  furrows  them  to-day, 
the  same  order  of  architecture  that  reigned  a  thou- 
sand years  ago  reigns  to-day. 

Go  to  Venice,  for  example,  and  at  a  glance  of 
the  eye  see  how  one  grand  dynasty  of  architec- 
ture has  succeeded  another,  the  Byzantine  giving 


SIMPLICITY  OF  CIVILIZATION  59 

place  to  the  Lombard,  the  Lombard  to  the  Gothic, 
the  Gothic  to  the  Saracenic,  the  Saracenic  to  the 
Renaissance.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  one  single 
order  has  maintained  its  own  for  ten  or  twelve  cen- 
turies,—  originally  an  importation  from  China 
through  Corea.  It  is  the  Tartar  order,  derived,  no 
doubt,  in  the  beginning  from  the  old  Tartar  tent, 
with  the  immense  curving  and  overhanging  roof, 
and  often  series  of  roofs,  with  which  every  child  is 
familiar  from  geography  pictures  of  Chinese  pago- 
das. On  large  buildings  this  roof  is  very  effective, 
its  great  height,  great  sweep,  and  the  facility  it 
offers  for  the  ornamentation  of  its  ridge,  eaves,  and 
beams,  giving  it  the  elements  of  a  distinct  and 
noble  form  of  construction.  But  what,  by  degrees, 
oppresses  the  mind  is  the  monotony  of  its  repeti- 
tion, making  one  often  close  his  eyes  to  relieve  the 
weary  sense  with  changeful  memories  of  Greek 
porticos,  Roman  arches  and  domes,  Gothic  aisles 
and  spires.  Not  only  is  this  Tartar  order  the  one 
unfailing  feature  of  the  temples,  but  it  is  equally 
that  of  all  the  feudal  castles  and  keeps  remaining 
for  inspection  to-day.  Mounted  on  the  angles  of 
the  immense  cyclopean  walls  that  formed  the  forti- 
fications, the  castles  are  all  simple  modifications  of 
the  Chinese  pagoda.  Evidently,  in  this  so  artistic 
people  there  was  no  spirit  of  initiative  to  conceive 
a  new  architectural  idea ;  or  rather,  perhaps,  this 
perpetual  repetition  is  an  instructive  bit  of  history, 
proving  the  inevitable  result  of  being  for  ages  cut 
off  from  contact  with  any  but  a  stereotyped  nation 
like  the  Chinese,  instead  of  lying  open,  as  Europe 


60  JAPAN 

did,  to  the  manifold  influences  of  Egypt,  Persia, 
Phoenicia,  Greece,  and  Rome. 

I  dwell  at  some  length  on  this  illustration  from 
the  architecture  of  Japan  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
emj)liasizing  the  simplicity  and  lack  of  complexity 
characteristic  of  this  people.  The  same  principle 
runs  through  everything.  The  traveler's  duty  is 
neither  to  praise  nor  to  blame,  but  simply  to  try  to 
comprehend.  If  a  nation  has  been  cut  off  from 
the  advantage  of  a  liberal  education  in  the  human- 
ities at  the  great  world-university,  why,  then,  it  has 
been  cut  off  from  such  advantage ;  and  all  is  said. 
The  only  fair  thing  is  to  weigh  and  appreciate  and 
be  grateful  for  what  they  have  done  with  their  own 
opportunities.  But  this  is  not  the  spirit  in  which 
so  much  has  been  written  about  Japan.  Rousseau's 
outcry  of  joy  over  his  discovery  of  the  archetypal, 
altogether  adorable  savage  who  was  to  regenerate 
sophisticated  Europe  by  his  artless  ways,  was  only 
a  forerunner  in  effusiveness  of  the  outcry  raised 
over  the  discovery  of  Japan.  Japan  was  the  ori- 
ginal Eden  before  the  Fall,  —  the  Fall  in  Architec- 
ture, Painting,  Poetry,  Refinement,  Instinctive 
Touch  with  Nature.      O  sancta  simplicitas  ! 

I  cannot  quit  the  solemn  groves  of  the 
Nikko,  or,  indeed,  of  any  of  the  great  Jap- 
anese temples,  without  a  word  about  their  bells, 
with  all  the  deep,  mysterious,  mighty  murmur  of 
the  ocean  in  them.  Wherever  one  may  wander 
under  the  giant  cryptomerias  and  among  the  moss- 
grown  tombs  of  abbots  and  monks,  the  low,  rich, 


JAPANESE  BELLS  61 

powerful  undulations  of  these  bells  come  rolling 
in  on  the  ear  like  the  sound  of  harmonizing  billows 
on  the  shore.  Enormous  in  size  and  weight,  hung 
in  low  pagodas  but  a  few  feet  above  the  ground, 
and  struck  only  by  ponderous  beams  of  wood 
swung  outside,  they  are  always  free  of  access  to 
any  passer-by. 

To  stand  beneath,  and  in  part  within,  the  dome 
of  one  of  these  great  bells  is  an  experience  for  a 
lifetime.  The  lightest  stroke  of  a  knuckle,  and 
like  a  vast  beehive  the  ponderous  mass  is  in  in- 
stant billion-fold  molecular  vibration.  How  it 
hums  and  hums  and  hums !  How  massive,  how 
deep,  how  sweet,  how  prolonged,  the  tone !  The 
ear  lingers  and  lingers  on  it,  and  it  will  not  die 
away.  One  feels  at  the  soul  centre  of  a  vibratory 
world,  from  which  stream  out  undulations  that  set 
pulsing  and  throbbing  the  whole  surrounding  grove, 
and  whose  tremulous  wave  motions  float  on  and  out 
through  a  responsive  universe.  Matter,  in  every 
material  sense,  is  dissolved  away.  With  the  mind's 
eye  one  sees,  clearly  as  did  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  that 
all  the  atoms  of  matter  that  go  to  make  up  the 
solar  system  might  be  "  shut  up  in  a  snuff-box," 
—  so  free,  so  elastic,  and  such  planetary  spaces 
apart  do  they  swing. 

Ah,  the  symbol  of  our  human  life  heard  pulsing 
here  in  this  great  bell !  The  natures  we  have  re- 
vered and  loved,  because  capable  of  rich,  deep,  pro- 
longed reverberation,  how  in  the  spirit  are  they 
drawn  about  us  now !  —  the  souls  in  whom,  grati- 
tude once  kindled,  sympathy  touched,  devoutness 


62  JAPAN 

moved,  these  divine  emotions  vibrate  on  through 
life.  In  contrast  with  this,  beings  there  are  whose 
whole  response  to  the  impact  of  love  or  sorrow 
seems  but  as  the  petty  click  of  a  spoon  on  the  rim 
of  a  teacup.  Lingering  resonance  is  there  none. 
The  momentary  click,  and  all  is  by ;  while  these 
deep  ones,  like  the  great  bells,  at  each  touch  of 
renewing  memory  hum  and  reverberate  in  every 
spiritual  molecule.  Devout  idolater  does  one  be- 
come, as  he  breathes  the  prayer,  "Oh!  for  the 
capacity  of  long,  rich  reverberation  like  thine ! 
Without  it,  how  shallow,  how  fleeting  all  human 
experience."  So  at  least  is  it  murmured  in  the 
ear  by  the  deep-hearted  bells  of  Japan. 


V. 

A  SINGLE  Boston  truckman  has  a  vocabulary 
of  vituperation  that  would  more  than  suf- 
fice for  the  whole  city  of  Tokyo,  with  its  million 
and  a  half  of  inhabitants.  As  for  jinrikisha  men 
here,  if  they  chance  to  collide  abradingly  to  scalp 
or  skin,  they  graciously  smile  on  one  another  as 
though  it  were  but  one  more  of  the  amenities  of 
the  profession.  The  most  ordinary  meetings  and 
partings  on  the  street  ai'e  accompanied  by  profound 
obeisances  enough  for  a  court  presentation.  Ex- 
ternally, then,  there  are  few  visible  signs  of  fric- 
tion. Of  the  swarms  of  children,  no  one  evinces 
the  slightest  addiction  to  pulling  the  hair  of  another, 
at  any  rate  in  public,  and  where  there  is  any  sanc- 
tuary of  retirement  for  doing  it  in  private  is  more 
than  eye  can  make  out.  Amiably  the  smallest  tot 
of  a  six-year  old  girl  carries  her  twenty-pound  little 
brother  tied  to  her  back,  as  though  he  were  born 
there,  so  careful  of  her  burden,  as  she  plays  ball 
with  her  mates,  that  rarely  a  collision  of  shaven 
heads  occurs.  To  crown  all,  it  has  roundly  been 
asserted  that  even  Japanese  babies  are  never  guilty 
of  the  impropriety  of  crying.  But  this  is  untrue. 
They  do  cry,  and  that  lustily.  But  then,  they  are 
so  very  young !  Perfect  manners  at  six  months 
would  be  an  unreasonable  expectation  even  in 
Japan. 


64  JAPAN 

What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  ?  one  begins  to 
ask.  Are  these  people  so  much  kindlier,  more 
considerate,  more  sympathetic,  than  we  are?  For 
the  first  week  in  Japan  the  new-comer  is  actually 
under  strong  enough  illusion  to  be  capable  of  be- 
lieving this ;  so  fascinating,  so  charmingly  acted, 
is  the  comedy  of  manners  played  before  his  eyes. 
He  recalls  our  own  brusque  ways  at  home,  and 
thinks,  "  Oh !  that  we  might  ever  hope  to  be  as 
innately  courteous  as  these  people."  The  fact  is, 
he  has  simply  knocked  the  brains  out  of  his  judg- 
ment on  the  near  bottom  through  an  attempt  to 
dive  to  profound  depths  in  a  pool  not  over  two 
inches  deep.  It  is  the  mistake  one  is  forever  mak- 
ing in  Japan  through  taking  outside  for  inside, 
expression  for  impression. 

Americans  are  too  direct,  even  blunt,  in  their 
ways,  to  know  much  about  the  philosophy  of  acting, 
especially  where  the  acting  is  so  perfect  as  to  have 
become  a  kind  of  substituted  second  nature,  en- 
tirely able  to  dispense  with  any  original  first  nature. 
"  If  you  want  to  make  me  weep,  you  must  first  weep 
yourseK,"  said  Horace.  "  Not  a  bit  of  it,"  replies 
Delsarte,  the  great  authority  with  modern  French 
actors  ;  "  on  the  contrary,  if  you  want  to  make  me 
weep,  be  sure  to  keep  your  own  eyes  dry.  Your 
weeping  would  spoil  all.  Train  your  artistic  per- 
ceptions, and  then  attend  strictly  to  the  outside  pre- 
sentation. If  you  can  work  to  such  imitative  per- 
fection facial  muscles,  gasping  respiration,  convul- 
sive action  of  voice,  as  to  look  as  though  you  were 
suffering,  then  will  you  have  me,  my  tender  wife, 


JAPANESE  MANNERS  65 

and  my  ingenuous  children,  dissolved  in  floods  of 
tears,  even  though  all  the  while  you  are  impassive 
as  an  oyster,  or  as  cool  as  a  cucumber.  Once  abso- 
lutely master  the  external  signs,  and  they  need  no 
more  vital  connection  with  the  state  of  mind  within 
than  the  false  face  with  which  a  child  convulses 
with  laughter  or  frightens  into  hysterics  his  little 
mates." 

For  a  thousand  years  Japan  has  been  under  tu- 
telage to  an  omnipresent  Delsarte,  working  from 
outside  to  inside,  —  or  little  matter  about  inside. 
From  Mikado  at  the  top  to  coolie  at  the  bottom  of 
the  social  scale,  one  undeviating  standard  of  man- 
ners has  been  held  before  the  eyes  of  the  most 
instinctively  imitative  people  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  Originally  an  importation  from  China,  this 
standard  has  been  elaborated  through  centuries  of 
study  into  ceremonial  etiquette  which,  through  con- 
stant repetition,  has  ended  by  becoming  automatic. 
No  one  ever  saw  anything  else,  no  one  ever  dreamed 
of  anything  else.  There  was  one  way  of  saluting 
a  superior,  one  of  saluting  an  equal,  one  of  salut- 
ing an  inferior ;  and  anybody's  head  would  have 
been  cut  off  who  should  have  ventured  to  depart 
from  it. 

From  his  earliest  impressionable  years,  then,  the 
Japanese  child  saw  nothing  but  prostrate  artisans 
saluting  Samurai,  Samurai  saluting  Daimios,  Dai- 
mios  saluting  Shoguns,  till  the  whole  ceremonial  be- 
came organized  into  him  as  thoroughly  as  are  their 
now  instinctive  habits  into  our  setters  and  pointers, 
—  perhaps  the  best-mannered  of  our  own  population. 


66  JAPAN. 

Little  girls  of  ten  will  one  see  in  good  families, 
whose  finish  of  breeding  would  have  awakened  the 
envy  of  a  duchess  at  the  court  of  Louis  XIV. 
Female  servants  will  one  be  lost  in  marvel  over,  at 
a  dinner  in  the  house  of  a  Japanese  gentleman, 
whose  grace  and  quiet  dignity  are  the  quintessence 
of  lady-like  refinement.  "  Trifles  make  perfection, 
but  perfection  is  no  trifle,"  is  the  motto. 

Now  if  it  meant  all  it  says,  the  angels  in  heaven 
could  not  live  up  internally  to  what  this  code  of 
manners  expresses  externally.  HajDpily,  no  one 
is  expected  to  live  up  to  it  internally.  It  is  a 
purely  artistic  production,  made  to  gratify  the  in- 
stincts of  an  artistic  people,  ceremonially  evolved 
to  smooth  life  of  its  asperities,  to  render  the  com- 
edy agreeable,  and  to  flatter  by  the  perpetual  in- 
terchange of  surface  courtesies.  The  knave  goes 
through  its  motions  quite  as  creditably  as  the 
saint ;  the  liar,  thief,  or  ruffian  quite  as  effectively 
as  the  gentle  or  sincere.  Nor  is  it  to  be  denied 
that  it  renders  things  vastly  attractive  on  the  out- 
side, and  even  exercises  a  strong  inhibiting  power 
over  outbreaks  of  petulance  and  rude  passion. 
But  the  moment  the  mind  goes  deeper,  it  is  felt  at 
what  a  frightful  cost  all  this  is  purchased.  It 
falsifies  the  nation  to  the  very  core.  It  kills  the 
sense  of  the  relation  that  should  subsist  between 
genuine  impression  and  corresijonding  expression, 
and  perpetually  suggests  the  idea,  "All  that  is  requi- 
site is  as  good  a  heart  as  can  be  made  of  a  head." 
Thus,  after  a  while,  every  man  of  frank,  unconven- 
tional nature  begins  to  hate  this  manner  for  its 


JAPANESE  MANNERS.  67 

false,  its  shallow,  its  monotonous  excess,  and  in 
his  wrath  to  say,  "  Till  the  Japanese  have  worse 
manners,  they  will  never  learn  genuine  courtesy ! 
Till  they  get  rid  of  their  masks,  they  will  never 
imderstand  the  social  charm  of  the  free  play  of 
joy,  love,  sorrow  !  " 

For  all  its  ceremonial  elaboration,  the  gamut  of 
expression  in  Japanese  manners  is  a  very  restricted 
one,  comparing  in  range  and  variety  with  the 
best  European  about  as  a  child's  one-octave  toy 
piano,  with  tinkling  glass  keys,  as  over  against  the 
compass  of  a  Steinway  Grand,  with  its  sounding- 
board  and  resonant  bass  and  treble.  It  makes 
more  show  at  first,  while  in  reality  the  range  of 
shifting  light  and  shade  that  lights  up  with  gen- 
uine love,  humor,  intelligence,  sympathy,  reverence, 
a  fine  face  with  us  is  in  comparison  as  an  orchestra 
to  a  tinkling  guitar. 

This  must  be  so.  There  is  nothing  behind  the 
Japanese  face  —  politically,  morally,  intellectually, 
reverentially  —  that  can  hold  a  moment's  com- 
parison with  that  which  is  behind  the  faces  of 
those  who  are  free-born  heirs  of  our  complex, 
magnificent  historical  past.  Strange  ignorance 
of  this  is  it  which  has  led  so  many  travelers  to  at- 
tribute to  the  Japanese  a  depth  of  quality  that  in 
the  nature  of  things,  the  order  of  evolution,  can 
in  no  way  belong  to  them ;  and  until  one  sees  into 
the  simplicity  and  even  monotony  —  albeit  a  "  mo- 
notony of  endless  variety  "  —  that  is  character- 
istic alike  of  their  literature,  their  poetry,  their 
architecture,  their  music,  their  politics,  and  even  of 


68  JAPAN. 

their  art,  he  will  never  read  them  with  discrimina- 
tion. They  evolved  a  wonderful  miniature  civili- 
zation, but  a  miniature  one  it  ever  remained  till 
they  were  brought  into  contact  with  races  of  a 
higher  strain  and  a  grander  inheritance,  —  with 
what  ultimate  result,  it  remains  yet  to  be  seen. 

Would  one  form  a  vivid  conception  of  the 
ideals  with  which  the  aspiring  youth  of 
any  country  fires  its  heart,  there  is  no  better  way 
than  to  visit  the  tombs  of  those  canonized  as  the 
foremost  heroes,  sages,  or  saints  of  the  land.  Is 
one  in  Italy  ?  Then  to  the  tombs  of  Dante,  St. 
Francis,  Mazzini,  let  him  go.  In  England  ? 
Then  to  those  of  Shakespeare,  Cromwell,  Nelson. 
In  America?  Then  to  those  of  Washington  and 
Lincoln.  For  like  insight,  whither  shall  one  be- 
take himself  in  Japan  ?  Without  question  to  the 
graves  of  the  Forty-Seven  Ronins,  who  so  loyally 
and  ferociously  avenged  their  Feudal  Master. 
There  will  he  find  young  men  burning  incense  on 
a  scale  as  nowhere  else.  And  why  ?  Because  the 
heroic  moral  standards  of  Japan  are  as  much 
bound  up  with  purely  feudal  ideals  as  were  once 
those  of  the  Scotch  Highlanders,  and  because  of 
the  popular  response  to  the  idea  that  the  supreme 
end  of  fidelity  to  the  chief  sanctifies  any  means 
in  the  way  of  the  most  savage  cruelty,  of  wholesale 
suicide,  of  the  sacrifice  even  of  wifely  chastity. 
Read,  in  Mitford's  Tales  of  Old  Japan,  the  story 
of  the  "  Forty-Seven  Ronins,"  as  inspiring  and 
as  revolting  a  commingling  as  the  annals  of  any 


HEROIC  MORAL  STANDARDS.  69 

people  can  show  of  magnificent  self-abnegation, 
with  tiger  cruelty ;  of  the  stoical  endurance  of 
year-long  hunger  and  outlawry,  with  capacity  to 
keep  at  a  white  heat  the  fixed  fanatical  idea  of 
avenging  a  wrong  done  a  master ;  yes,  and  of 
absolute  consecration  of  wifely  love  to  a  husband's 
honor,  along  with  glorying  in  the  degradation  of 
her  womanly  purity  as  a  means  to  subserve  his 
ends.  The  man  who  can  read  this  story  without 
high-wrought  admiration  for  such  qualities  of 
loyalty,  courage,  and  fathomless  contempt  of  self, 
has  no  sense  in  him  of  the  heroic  ;  as  equally  the 
man  belongs  back  in  the  realm  of  savagery  who 
does  not  shudder  at  such  Moloch  sacrifice,  on  a 
blood-reeking  feudal  altar,  of  all  other  graces  and 
sanctities  of  life. 

Here  again  we  have  Japan  through  and  through, 
the  paucity  of  her  ideas,  the  limitation  of  her  range 
of  emotional  response,  her  incaj)acity,  so  far,  for 
the  complex  and  synthetic,  as  clearly  revealed  in  the 
narrowness  of  her  heroic  moral  standard  as  in 
the  lack  of  harmonic  depth  in  her  tinkling  music. 
The  wife  of  the  Scotch  Highlander  outlawed  in 
the  service  of  his  chief  would  unshrinkingly  have 
faced  with  her  husband  starvation  on  the  wintry 
hills  ;  but  once  had  it  come  to  the  issue  of  degrad- 
ing her  person,  to  supj^ly  him  with  means  to  carry 
out  his  fell  purpose,  heroically  would  she  have  cried, 
"  Nay  !  I  will  stab  myself  to  the  heart  for  you, 
but  pollute  myself,  even  for  you,  never  !  "  Other 
test  is  there  none  of  the  scope  and  elevation  of  a 
nation's  moral  standai'ds  than  the  range  and  char- 


70  JAPAN 

acter  of  the  acts  that  —  alike  by  Its  wives,  its  citi- 
zens, its  soldiers,  its  tradesmen,  its  statesmen,  even 
to  save  home  or  country  —  woidd  be  spurned  in 
abhorrence. 

It  was  a  lovely  October  afternoon  on  which 
my  friend  and  I  visited  the  graves  of  the  Forty- 
Seven  Ronins,  the  focal  heart  of  the  Japan  of  the 
near  past,  as  also  of  its  burning  present.  Over- 
head arched  the  great  trees,  and  quietly  near  by 
brimmed  the  clear  pool  in  which,  as  triumphant 
avengers,  they  washed  the  bloody  head  of  their 
master's  insulter  before  depositing  it  on  the  mas- 
ter's tomb,  and  then  themselves  inaugurating  a 
holocaust  of  harakiri.  "  After  life's  fitful  fever, 
they  sleep  well,"  while  all  about  stand  the  great 
stone  lanterns,  heaped  in  their  interiors  with  the 
ashes  of  incense-sticks  burned  as  tributes  of  rev- 
erence. Yet  in  those  ashes,  I  felt,  still  glowed 
a  devouring  fire,  with  which  Japan  will  have  to 
account.  These  worshipers,  —  they  are  the  sons 
and  grandsons  of  the  old  Samurai,  the  former 
feudal  retainers.  They  are  the  educated  classes 
of  to-day,  the  leaders  in  faction  politics,  the  civil 
and  military  officers,  outwardly  changed  through 
a  thin  veneer  of  Occidental  culture,  inwardly  the 
same  at  heart.  Rely  on  them  for  splendid  cour- 
age and  self-sacrifice,  and  you  will  get  it.  Rely 
on  them  for  savage  partisanshij}  carried  over  into 
the  new  relations,  for  a  spirit  that  will  stick  at 
nothing,  —  not  at  the  last  extreme  of  calumny, 
deceit,  brutal  violence,  assassination,  in  behalf  of 
their  party  chiefs,  —  and  equally  will  you   get  it ; 


HEROIC  MORAL  STANDARDS  71 

nay,  are  already  getting  it.  Not  in  vain  do  tliey 
burn  incense  at  the  graves  of  the  Forty-Seven 
Eonins.  The  Forty-Seven  Ronins  are  their  na- 
tional moral  ideal,  as  much  as  Garibaldi  is  the 
Italian's ;  Nelson,  the  Englishman's ;  Lincoln,  the 
American's.  Not  that  there  are  not  noble  excep- 
tions, and  many  of  them.  I  speak  of  the  rank  and 
file. 


VI. 


No  form  of  art  has  ever  become  popular, 
that  is,  a  source  of  genuine  pleasure  to  large 
numbers,  unless  through  ideally  interpreting  to 
them  ideas  and  sentiments  deep-rooted  in  their  own 
experience.  Back  of  the  epoch  of  the  great  Greek 
sculpture  were  the  happy  Olympian  games,  through 
which  thousands  were  educated  to  appreciation  of 
all  the  fine  points  of  a  developed  human  body,  and 
to  keen  delight  in  them.  Thence  the  cordial  wel- 
come, hailing  a  beautiful  statue.  Back  of  the 
epoch  in  Italy  of  the  painting  of  Perugino  and 
Raphael  lay  the  life  and  preaching  of  St.  Francis 
of  Assisi,  dowering  all  the  hillsides  of  Umbria  with 
human  countenances  lit  with  the  same  mystic  love 
and  rapture  which  these  great  masters  later  trans- 
ferred to  the  canvas.  Thence  the  devout  greeting 
of  their  works.  Even  where  the  artist  himself  did 
not  feel  it,  the  people  felt  it. 

Equally,  would  the  mind  surrender  itseK  to  the 
peculiar  charm  of  the  painting  of  Japan,  must  one 
fii-st  seek  to  get  into  living  touch  with  what  lies 
behind  it  in  the  common  heart,  that  is,  into  living 
touch  with  a  popular  naive  enjoyment  of  nature,  as 
instinctive  as  the  delight  of  the  bird  in  singing,  of 
the  butterfly  in  palpitating  in  the  sunshine.  With 
us  at  home  there  is   so  much   affectation   about 


SOURCE   OF  JAPANESE  ART  73 

nature  on  the  part  of  many  who  hardly,  without 
yawning,  can  linger  for  ten  minutes  over  the 
loveliest  view,  as  to  make  it  at  times  a  positive 
relief  to  come  across  a  man  or  woman  bluntly 
audacious  enough  to  say,  "  I  hate  nature  !  "  It  is 
not  so  in  Japan.  Literally  are  the  Saints'  Festival 
Days  the  days  of  the  flowering  of  St.  Cherry  Blos- 
som, St.  Wistaria,  St.  Lotus,  St.  Chrysanthemum, 
the  holidays  in  the  Church  Year  of  Nature,  when 
thousands  of  devotees  flock  out  to  worship  at  these 
incense-breathing  shrines. 

On  St.  Maple  Day,  when  the  gold  and  crimson 
aureoles  of  all  the  saints  of  this  communion  are 
transfigTiring  with  the  reflexes  of  their  sheen  hill 
and  mountain  side,  what  a  spectacle  to  wander  out 
into  the  country !  Thousands  on  thousands  of 
people,  men,  women,  and  children,  are  abroad. 
Forth  and  back  they  trudge,  perhaps  twenty  miles, 
and  all  to  see  the  tints  and  dyes  of  the  maples,  and 
to  bring  home  red  and  gold  branches  of  them.  In 
America,  we  would  think  there  must  be  something 
going  on  as  well  worth  attention  as  a  fire  or  a 
strike.  No,  it  is  nothing  but  the  maples,  and  they 
furnish  aesthetic  stimulus  enough.  How  all  day 
long  do  the  people  enjoy  themselves !  Is  it  any 
wonder,  then,  they  love  an  art  that  renders  back 
to  them  these  happy  sensations,  and  that  revives 
in  their  breasts  such  charming  memories !  Of 
this  art,  they  ask  for  no  hidden  symbolism,  no 
inner  mystic  interpretation,  —  ask  merely  that  it 
shall  renew  for  them  their  own  delight  in  its  orig- 
inal.    In  their  own  minds,  while  in  the  presence  of 


74  JAPAN 

nature,  all  is  unclcfined,  floating,  sensuous  charm. 
Let  the  artist  feel  this,  and  give  it  delicate  expres- 
sion. 

A  few  themes,  with  endless  variations  per- 
formed on  them,  —  here  lies  the  essential 
characteristic  of  Japanese  art.  But  how  charming 
these  variations  are !  Many  the  novelty -hunting 
Enoiish  and  American  tourist  who  is  heard  ex- 
claiming  that  he  is  sick  to  death  of  cranes,  and 
would  like  to  take  a  gun  and  blaze  away  at  a  thou- 
sand or  more  superfluous  screens  decorated  with 
them.  This  a  Japanese  could  never  understand. 
To  him  the  crane  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and 
forever.  He  enjoys  him  wading,  patting  the  mud 
with  his  feet,  preening  his  feathers,  alighting,  ris- 
ing from  the  shore,  capturing  a  frog,  whirling  in 
mid-air,  and  has  continued  thus  to  enjoy  him  for 
no  end  of  centuries.  He  wants  him  on  his  teapot, 
his  cup,  his  screen,  his  match-box,  his  wall  picture, 
his  wife's  dress,  his  bronze  charcoal-burner,  his 
lacquered  box  or  cloisonne  vase.  Too  much  crane 
he  cannot  have.  And  exactly  the  same  is  his  feel- 
ing about  lotus  flowers,  cherry  blossoms,  chrysan- 
themums. 

Such  for  ages  was  the  one  art  demand  of  the 
Buddhist  prelates,  the  Daimios,  Shoguns,  and  Mi- 
kados ;  while  the  artisan  artists,  their  absolute  de- 
pendent subjects,  lived  on  the  merest  pittance,  and 
devoted  whole  lives  of  patience,  skill,  and  naive  de- 
light in  natural  objects  to  gratifying  the  taste  of 
the  only  classes  who  commanded  wealth.     With  no 


VARIETY  IN  UNITY  75 

hope  to  rise  out  of  their  narrow  lot,  no  stimulus  to 
worldly  ambition  or  covetousness,  no  distractions 
to  turn  them  aside  to  other  interests  and  pleasures, 
they  found  their  sole  enjoyment  in  art  for  art's 
sake,  and  a  little  rice  or  millet  to  keep  alive  on. 
Time  was  a  matter  of  no  importance ;  for  to  them 
there  was  no  meaning  in  our  American  phrase, 
"  Time  is  money."  No  ;  time  is  the  leisure  spirit, 
to  absorb  and  brood  over  impressions,  to  work 
them  out  quietly  to  perfect  expression,  to  achieve  at 
last  something  that  would  please  the  Daimio.  Of 
high-wrought  passion  there  is  in  Japanese  art  no 
trace  :  of  childlike  delight  in  living  close  to  nature 
through  art,  no  end.  Dante  declared  that  his 
verses  made  him  lean.  No  Japanese  could  ever 
say  this,  or  even  comprehend  its  meaning.  A  sub- 
lime poet  like  Dante,  agonizing  over  such  a  theme 
as  Hell,  Purgatory,  and  Heaven,  might  well  cry  out 
that  it  was  drinking  up  his  blood  and  making  his 
flesh  to  waste  away  ;  but  the  artist,  the  beginning 
and  end  of  whose  work  is  to  invite  one  to  mere 
delight  with  him  over  the  motion  of  a  fish  in  the 
water,  needs  to  be  but  a  genial,  impressionable 
child  of  nature,  face  to  face  with  brook,  tree,  and 
sunshine. 

To  take  in  all  this,  let  one  visit,  for  example,  the 
famous  Nijo  Palace  in  Kyoto,  the  palace  of  the  last 
of  the  Shoguns  of  the  Tokugawa  dynasty.  What 
an  historical  commentary,  the  building  itself,  on  the 
simplicity,  the  infinite  variations  on  a  few  themes, 
of  all  things  Japanese !  One  story  high,  and  differ- 
ing no  whit   in  architectural  structure  from   the 


76  JAPAN 

plainest  artisan's  house  on  the  street  except  in  the 
immensity  of  its  ranges  of  apartments,  to  its  rich 
and  splendid  decoration  it  owes  all  its  distinction. 
The  same  style  of  framework,  only  constructed  of 
rarer  woods ;  the  same  sliding  divisions  between 
the  rooms,  only  painted  by  the  greatest  artists ; 
the  same  open-work  in  the  ramma,  or  ventilation 
screens,  only  here  translated  into  the  most  fasci- 
nating carvings  of  birds  and  flowers  !  Very  mag- 
nificent is  the  effect ;  for  the  paintings  on  all  four 
sides  of  the  rooms,  from  floor  to  ceiling,  are  on  a 
ground  of  gold,  and  the  splendor  of  the  lacquer- 
work  on  the  beams,  together  with  the  marvelous 
beauty  of  their  gilded  jointures  of  chased  metal, 
awakens  the  sense  of  a  universally  diffused  glory 
of  sunshine.  And  yet  in  everything  is  revealed  the 
Japanese  simplicity  of  sensation.  One  thing  at  a 
time,  and  without  excitement  or  hurry. 

Wander  in  imagination,  on  the  other  hand, 
through  the  apartments  of  a  European  palace,  and 
recall  how  in  each  room  attention  is  distracted  by 
an  endless  multiplicity  of  objects.  The  paintings 
are  here  a  landscape,  here  a  cattle  piece,  here  a 
group  of  figures,  here  a  portrait ;  and  the  mind  is 
exercised  with  the  distressing  psychological  prob- 
lem of  seeing  how  many  things  it  can  take  in  at  the 
same  moment  without  missing  any  or  enjoying  any. 
How  different  in  the  apartments  of  the  Shogun's 
palace !  Enter  one  of  them,  and  you  find  its 
pictured  walls  entirely  given  up  to  a  single  subject, 
say,  to  marvelous  delineations  of  wild  geese,  — 
wild  geese  swooping  down  in  a  flock  on  a  pond,  wild 


VARIETY  IN   UNITY  77 

geese  stai'tled  with  fright  and  beating  the  water 
with  their  wings  in  their  frantic  attempt  to  rise, 
wild  geese  floating  gracefully  on  the  limpid  mirror 
of  the  surface,  in  the  double  beauty  of  reflection. 
Evidently,  the  subject  of  interest  is  wild  geese  them- 
selves, and  not  a  competition  of  attraction  between 
them  and  Cupids,  elephants,  the  battle  of  Water- 
loo, and  Hamlet  improving  the  occasion  of  Yorick's 
skull  for  moral  reflection.  Now,  the  result  of  all 
this  is  a  calm,  contemplative,  wild-goose  frame  of 
mind.  You  become  absolutely  fascinated  over  this 
one  realm  of  nature ;  and,  if  you  have  a  side 
thought,  it  is  only  to  wonder  why  Titian  and 
Kaphael  should  ever  have  wasted  their  powers  on 
madonnas,  saints,  and  Yenuses,  when  they  might 
have  consecrated  them  to  wild  geese. 

Again,  you  enter  another  room.  The  artist  who 
here  has  the  whole  field  to  himself  is  evidently 
a  devout,  mystical  worshiper  of  bamboo.  "  There 
is  but  one  glory  of  the  vegetable  creation, — 
bamboo  ;  and  I  am  its  prophet,"  is  the  substance  of 
his  creed  ;  and  in  ten  minutes  he  has  converted  you 
to  the  only  sound  and  orthodox  faith.  Why  care 
any  more  for  riches,  honors,  luxuries,  so  long  as 
bamboo  exists,  "  so  exquisite  in  its  grace,"  as  the 
French  artist  said,  "  that  we  can  even  forgive  it  for 
being  useful"?  To  live,  move,  and  have  your 
being  in  the  mind  of  such  an  interpreter  of  bamboo, 
—  this  seems  the  one  mispeakable  privilege  of  life, 
immediate  revelation  to  you  that  the  sole  end  of  art 
is  to  create  a  soul  into  you  which  henceforth  shall  be 
one  with  the  lilt  of  stem  and  dip  and  rise  of  ostrich- 
plume  foliage  of  such  a  plant  as  this. 


78  JAPAN 

Here  are  but  a  couple  of  illustrations  of  hundreds 
tliat  might  be  given  from  this  same  Nijo  Palace. 
And  yet,  delightedly  as  I  felt  their  beauty,  had  I 
had  along  with  me  a  bright,  enthusiastic  little  girl 
of  seven,  she  would  have  felt  it  just  as  keenly. 
While,  in  a  Dresden  or  Florence  gallery,  she  would 
soon  have  yawned  with  weariness  over  so  much  be- 
yond her  reach  of  thought  and  feeling,  here  she 
would  have  taken  in  everything  as  naturally  as 
though  herself  in  the  woods  or  on  the  shore  of  a 
lake.  Thus  becomes  clear  the  reason  for  the  univer- 
sal jjopularity  of  Japanese  art,  —  the  reason  why, 
sweeping  all  before  it,  it  has  informed  and  illumined 
with  its  spirit  every  branch  even  of  the  humblest 
manufacture. 

Out  of  all  this  simplicity  and  lack  of  com- 
plexity on  which  I  dwell,  there  grew  one 
admirable  result.  Poor  and  rich,  ignorant  and  cul- 
tivated, could  alike  appreciate  the  kind  of  art  the 
land  brought  forth.  With  people  in  Europe  and 
America,  it  would  be  the  sheerest  absurdity  to 
say  that  anything  like  this  is  possible.  The  story 
runs  that  Dante  once  burst  into  a  blacksmith's  shop 
and  pounded  the  blacksmith  for  presuming  to  sing 
one  of  his  own  recondite  sonnets.  Wordsworth, 
Tennyson,  and  Browning  have  their  select  circle  of 
readers,  Raphael  and  Angelo  their  esoteric  wor- 
shipers, the  Greek  statues  their  limited  groups 
of  sincere  appreciators.  But  outside  of  such  select 
circles  the  works  of  these  mighty  spirits  are  severely 
let  alone.     No  farmer  craves  the  Transfiguration 


INFLUENCE  OF  JAPANESE  ART  79 

on  the  side  of  his  teapot,  the  Laocobn  on  his  cart- 
harness,  or  the  Prophets  and  Sibyls  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel  on  his  wall  paper.  In  Japan,  however,  the 
exact  reverse  holds  true.  The  deepest  and  most 
beautiful  thing  any  Japanese  artist  has  produced 
lies  level  in  its  essential  spirit  with  the  genuine  ap- 
preciation of  every  man,  woman,  or  child  who  has 
any  fineness  of  sense-perception,  any  first-hand  joy 
in  nature.  Here,  I  repeat  it,  is  an  art  that  has  made 
itself  a  universal  national  possession.  The  young 
girl  wants  its  graceful  forms  and  harmonious  colors 
on  her  skirt  and  belt ;  the  housewife  wants  them  on 
her  cups,  saucers,  and  tea-caddy.  The  boy  wants 
them  on  his  kite ;  the  brazier  wants  them  for  his 
pots,  the  joiner  for  his  open-work  carvings.  In 
fine,  everbody  wants  them  for  everything  ;  and 
everybody  gets  them.  Go  into  the  cheapest  bazaar 
of  three  to  five  cent  articles,  and  they  are  all  stamped 
with  the  same  sign  manual  of  beauty.  The  very 
cakes  and  confectionery  are  such  exquisite  render- 
ings of  scarlet  maple  leaves,  or  chrysanthemums, 
that  you  would  vow  they  had  just  been  picked  up 
in  the  autumn  woods  or  cut  fresh  from  the  plant. 

Japan,  in  its  whole  extent  and  with  all  its 
countless  little  islands  included,  is  about  as 
large  as  North  and  South  Dakota  combined.  Only 
one  twelfth  of  its  soil  is  arable,  and  even  that,  in 
large  part,  solely  through  the  immense  artificial 
system  of  irrigation,  on  which  depends  its  rice  crop. 
And  yet  its  population  is  over  forty  millions. 
Divide  the  possible  product  of  the  soil  of  one  twelfth 


80  JAPAN 

of  North  and  South  Dakota  among  forty  millions 
of  people,  and  it  is  plain  what  a  mouthful  it  would 
give  to  each.  And  yet  the  country  was  for  centu- 
ries hermetically  sealed  against  imports  from  foreign 
countries.  Patient,  untiring  industry  in  cultivation 
was  then  the  only  safeguard  against  starvation. 
So  poorly  fed  a  race  coidd  not  work  at  a  high  speed. 
It  was  unfitted  for  spurts.  It  must  economize  its 
forces,  and  expend  them  at  low  pressure  only. 
Given  centuries  on  centuries  of  this,  and  one  order 
of  nervous  fibre  is  determined,  as  much  as,  given 
fifty  years  of  working  high-speed  reapers,  threshers, 
winnowers,  and  elevators,  another  sort  of  fibre  has 
been  developed  among  us. 

With  the  artisan-artist  class  the  same  simplicity 
of  environment  prevailed.  They,  too,  were  poorly 
and  monotonously  fed.  The  demand  made  on  them 
for  the  products  of  their  skill  had  little  variety  in 
it.  From  father  to  son  descended  the  same  crafts 
and  technique,  the  same  simple  pleasure  in  exercis- 
ing them.  The  patrons,  moreover,  for  whom  they 
worked  were  the  cultured  classes  of  a  race  exqui- 
sitely endowed  with  Eesthetic  judgment.  For  cen- 
tury on  century  every  rich  temple  eagerly  added  to 
its  wealth  of  essentially  similar  bronzes,  lacquer- 
work,  vestments  of  brocade,  embroideries,  screens, 
carvings,  images,  and  had  its  great  fire-proof  store- 
houses in  which  the  larger  part  of  its  treasures 
was  laid  away.  With  the  feudal  lords  the  like 
passion  prevailed.  Every  castle  boasted  its  im- 
mense ancestral  collection  of  rare  and  beautiful 
objects,  from  which  could  be  drawn  at  any  time 


CONDITIONS  AFFECTING  ART  81 

for  inspection  vases,  porcelains,  superb  dresses, 
arms  decorated  with  every  delicate  fancy  of  carv- 
ing or  inlaid  work.  As  there  were  no  innovations 
of  new  ideas,  invention  was  stimulated  simply  in 
the  direction  of  imparting  fresh  grace  and  charm 
to  the  old. 


VII. 

As  a  general  rule,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
more  dissolute  and  shameless  the  life  an 
American,  Englishman,  or  German  is  leading  in 
Japan,  the  more  conscientiously  is  he  opposed  to 
missions,  and  the  lower  in  the  scale  does  he  rate 
the  motives  and  character  of  missionaries.  Really 
pathetic,  for  example,  is  it  to  hear  him  enlarge  on 
the  cruelty  of  introducing  the  standards  of  our 
severe  and  ascetic  American  sisters  among  these 
unconscious  children  of  nature,  their  eyes  not  yet 
open  to  the  fatal  knowledge  of  good  and  evil. 

Along  with  these  stanch  chamjsions  of  the  prim- 
itive Eden  before  the  Fall  into  the  lost  innocency 
of  moral  distinctions,  one  encounters  another  class 
equall}''  severe  on  missionaries.  It  consists  of  hyper- 
sensitive, aesthetic  natures,  so  ethereally  organized 
as  to  live  in  perpetual  danger  of  "  dying  of  a  rose 
in  aromatic  pain."  They  tremble  lest  under  the 
hot  sirocco  breath  of  the  missionary,  the  aroma 
will  be  dispelled  from  the  flower,  the  dew  exhaled 
from  the  grass. 

As,  after  the  most  exhaustive  investigation,  I 
could  never  discover  that  any  representative  of 
either  of  these  classes  had  ever  been  near  a  mission, 
I  was  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  their  judgments 
were  either  too  dissolutely  or  too  assthetically  a 
priori  to  be  entitled  to  great  weight. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  MISSIONS  83 

There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  it  is  per- 
fectly legitimate  for  the  modern  man  to  hate  mis- 
sions. The  old  idea  of  a  mission  was  that  of  a  war 
of  extermination  on  the  part  of  the  votaries  of  a 
foreign  religion,  refusing  to  recognize  anything 
divine  or  eternally  human  in  the  creeds  it  had  come 
to  supplant.  The  new  idea  —  the  one  that  is  just 
beginning  to  daAvn  on  the  world  —  is  that  of  a 
courteous,  loving  compassion  between  two  peoples 
of  the  faiths  and  practices  that  seem  to  each  most 
sacred.  It  is  founded  on  sympathy,  founded  on 
the  recognition  of  the  great  historico-divine  influ- 
ences which,  through  race,  situation,  institutions, 
have  shaped  each  nation.  It  is  a  simple  libel  to 
say  that  this  idea  is  not  largely  recognized  by 
the  missionaries  of  to-day  to  Japan.  They  were 
the  first  to  introduce  well-ordered  schools,  broader 
female  education,  instruction  in  medicine,  hospitals 
presided  over  by  men  of  real  science,  with  a  hun- 
dred other  good  things.  I  say  this  all  the  more 
willingly  because,  from  my  tenderest  years,  I  was 
brought  up  with  a  rabid  hydrophobia  against  mis- 
sionaries that  would  have  staggered  the  resources 
of  Pasteur.  Is  there  not,  then,  such  a  thing  as 
taking  a  broad,  historical  view  of  missions,  —  as 
well  of  their  past  as  their  future  ? 

Like  every  other  nation,  Japan  in  the  past  was 
indebted  to  missions  for  its  highest  religious  and 
material  development.  East  Indian  Buddhism, 
Chinese  Confucianism,  these  were  the  great  theo- 
logical and  ethical  influences  that  shaped  its  faiths 
and  codes  of  conduct.     Emphatically  as  the  land- 


84  JAPAN 

ing  of  Gregory  IV.'s  missionaries  in  England  meant 
to  the  then  barbaric  island  contact  with  Roman 
civilization  and  law,  contact  with  Christianity's 
splendid  inheritance  through  Judaea,  Persia,  Greece, 
so,  in  the  far-away  past  of  Japan,  the  landing  of 
Buddhist  monks  and  Confucian  teachers  meant 
contact  with  the  profounder  religious  conceptions 
and  higher  ethical  codes  of  great  races,  with  thou- 
sands of  years  of  thought  and  experience  behind 
them.  So  has  it  always  been,  and  so  must  it  con- 
tinue to  be.  The  race  or  nation  which  idly  and 
vainly  boasts  that  it  is  sole  creator  of  the  best  it 
has  is  only  a  magnified  and  monstrous  image  of  the 
individual  man,  who,  arrogantly  calling  himself 
self-made,  falls  down  on  his  knees  and  worships  his 
silly  little  creative  self. 

Japan  has  already  given  an  enthusiastic  welcome 
to  one  class  of  missionaries  —  not  very  disinter- 
ested ones,  it  is  true  —  from  the  West ;  that  is,  to 
ship-building,  railroad-contracting,  factory-estab- 
lishing missionaries.  She  has  ardently  received 
the  science,  the  mechanic  arts,  the  materialistic 
philosophy  of  the  West ;  and  no  wonder  it  has 
seemed  to  her  an  "Arabian  Nights"  revelation. 
But,  to  confine  ourselves  simply  to  the  English- 
speaking  nationalities,  is  this  all  America  and 
England  have  to  offer,  —  America  and  England, 
who  have  in  their  spiritual  blood  Isaiah,  Jesus  and 
Paul,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Epic- 
tetus  and  Seneca,  Newton  and  Leibnitz,  Shake- 
speare, Phidias,  Raphael  and  Angelo,  Kant  and 
Hegel,  heroes,  divines,  sages,  and  saints  innumer- 


THE   QUESTION  OF  MISSIONS  85 

able  ?  No  man  who  feels  anything  of  devout  grat- 
itude for  what  all  these  magnificent  influences  have 
been  to  him  can  have  a  moment's  hesitation  in  say- 
ing, it  would  prove  an  unspeakable  boon  to  any 
people,  never  yet  in  living  contact  with  so  grand  a 
hierarchy  of  powers,  to  be  brought  into  vital  rela- 
tions with  them. 

Japan,  alas !  has  cause  enough  to  say,  on  the 
score  of  the  brutal  international  treatment  she  has 
received  from  England  —  though  in  a  far  less  de- 
gTce  from  America,  —  "  If  all  your  splendid  inher- 
itance from  the  past  has  made  you  capable  of  no 
nobler  spirit  than  you  have  showed  to  us,  we  want 
none  of  it !  "  In  one  sense  there  is  no  answer  to 
make  to  such  an  arraignment.  But,  in  another 
sense,  there  is.  Nationalities  are  as  yet  but  big, 
bullying  brutes  in  their  dealings  with  weaker  pow- 
ers. The  higher  influences  pleaded  for  have  so 
far  lifted  individuals  rather  than  corporate  masses. 
But  individuals  they  have  lifted  by  millions.  Why, 
then,  should  not  the  most  advanced  minds  among 
the  nations  exchange  their  highest  ideals,  pro- 
foundest  thoughts,  deepest  sentiments,  aspirations, 
and  hopes,  and  so  work  on  sympathetically  for  a 
better  future  ? 

No  historical  student  who  should  attempt  to 
compare  Japan's  inheritance  from  the  past  with 
that  of  Europe  and  America  could  for  a  moment 
hesitate  as  to  the  enormously  richer,  higher,  and 
more  complex  character  of  the  latter.  Now,  at 
last,  this  new-found  race  of  the  East  aspires  to  take 
a  place   among  the  active,  powerful,  progressive 


86  JAPAN 

nations  of  the  world.  The  day  was  in  the  far  past 
when  Germany  and  England  were  stirred  with  the 
like  impulse ;  and.  their  end  was  effected  only  by 
becoming  heirs  of  the  culture,  order,  and  religion 
of  the  christianized  Roman  Empire,  with  Greece, 
Asia  Minor,  and  Egypt  behind  them.  Why  must 
not.  Japan  go  through  some  similar  leavening  pro- 
cess, if  she  is  to  take  coequal  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual rank?  A  grand  historical  ancestry  in  the 
spirit  she  must  have ;  and,  just  as  into  this  an- 
cestry nation  after  nation  in  Europe  was  adopted, 
till  it  became  f  reeborn  child  by  assimilating  all  that 
was  best  in  its  culture,  so  must  it  be  with  this  new 
aspirant  among  the  nations.  The  world's  highest 
achievement  is  no  monopoly,  but  the  common 
property  of  the  world.  Did  Greece  possess  it  once  ? 
did  Judaea  possess  it  once?  did  Rome  possess  it 
once?  It  was  but  held  in  trust  for  Germany, 
France,  England,  against  the  day  when  their  ma- 
jority should  have  come.  Equally  is  it  held  in 
trust  for  Japan. 

Entirely  apart,  however,  from  every  ques- 
tion of  proselytism,  or  of  the  extent  of  the 
conversions  to  Christianity  made  by  Protestants  or 
Catholics,  —  and  they  are  increasingly  large,  — 
no  thoughtful  observer  can  fail  to  recognize  the 
strength  of  the  reaction  that  has  set  in  within  the 
bosom  of  the  Buddhist  church  itself.  It  is  a  false 
idea  that  Buddhism  is  dying  out  in  Japan,  that  is, 
among  the  masses  of  the  people.  On  the  contrary, 
under  the  stress  of  Christian  competition,  it  has  been 
incited  to  a  strong  and  salutary  revival,  born  of  the 


THE  QUESTION  OF  MISSIONS  87 

stimulus  of  contact  with  a  more  vivid  religious  faith 
and  with  broader  humanitarian  ideas.  As  to  the 
government  attempt  to  regalvanize  Shintoism,  and 
to  enact  it  into  a  national  cult,  it  proved  an  abortive 
failure.  There  was  nothing  vital  in  Shintoism  to 
regalvanize,  unless  a  low  form  of  hypnotic  spirit- 
ism rife  among  the  most  ignorant.  The  whole 
idea  of  its  revival  was  a  sheer  antiquarian  fad,  a 
politico-religious  masquerade  in  a  frippery  of  worn- 
out  old  semi-ecclesiastical  clothes. 

With  Buddhism,  however,  it  was  otherwise.  It 
had  a  deep  hold  on  the  popular  heart,  alike  through 
superstition  and  through  elements  in  itself  of  depth 
and  spirituality.  Among  its  monks  and  abbots  are 
numbered  to-day  men  of  the  highest  birth,  the 
noblest  character,  and  the  richest  philosophical 
culture  in  Japan.  There  is  now  building  in  the 
city  of  Tokyo  a  Hongwangi  temple,  which  in  splen- 
dor will  rival  any  that  Japan  ever  saw ;  and  it  is  a 
curious  fact  that,  in  the  work  of  hauling  the  beams 
and  other  heavy  material  for  its  construction,  six 
great  sets  of  cables,  —  woven  entirely  of  the  hair 
of  women  wdio  had  shoi'n  their  locks  to  dedicate 
them  to  this  sacred  service  —  have  already  been 
worn  out,  while  the  seventh  set  of  like  cables  is  in 
daily  use.  Certainly  this  attests  in  Buddhism  the 
survival  at  least  of  a  force  of  capillary  attraction 
that  would  excite  amazement  even  in  a  treatise  on 
physics,  and  which  surely  were  hard  to  surpass  in 
the  annals  of  any  other  form  of  religion. 

Yet  it  is  these  very  women  that  have  thus  sac- 
rificed to  the  temple  service  their  crown  of  glory, 
who  are  to  be  most  deeply  benefited  by  the  revival, 


88  JAPAN. 

whicli  European  Christianity,  with  its  ineffably 
higher  ideal  of  woman,  is  setting  on  in  Buddhism. 
Dear,  gentle,  patient  beings,  they  need  it,  and,  by 
all  that  is  ennobling  and  enriching,  they  ought  to 
have  it.  So  ingrained  is  their  sense  of  the  inher- 
ent inferiority  of  their  sex,  so  much  is  there  latent 
in  their  sweet,  self-sacrificing  natures  that  has  had 
no  chance  of  sympathetic  development,  so  little  do 
they  dream  of  what  is  hidden  in  the  chivalrous, 
romantic  love  of  man  to  woman,  that  a  marvelous 
revelation  is  in  store  for  them  ;  yes,  and  is  already 
breaking,  through  contact  with  the  womanhood  of 
the  Occident. 

Here,  in  truth,  in  the  work  of  noble  Western 
women  yearning  and  toiling  for  the  intellectual  and 
moral  education  of  young  girls,  is  a  leaven  that  is 
destined  to  permeate  and  uplift  the  family  life  of 
Japan.  The  best  thing  now  in  this  family  life,  the 
most  spontaneous  and  beautiful,  is  the  love  of  the 
little  children.  Japan  is  the  paradise  of  childhood. 
But  the  paradise  of  the  wife  it  is  not.  Not  for  an 
hour  would  a  high-souled  American  woman  endure 
the  indignity  of  the  relation  as  on  the  average  it 
is  found.  No  wonder  then,  that,  with  sensibilities 
stung  to  the  quick,  such  women  feel  it  a  sacred 
obligation  to  strive  to  lift  their  sisterhood  in  the 
East  into  the  higher  realm  of  dignity  and  honor 
in  which' they  themselves  live.  Truly,  in  contrast, 
it  is  a  bit  exasperating  to  read  so  much  that  has 
been  written  on  Japan  by  Americans,  —  scienti- 
fically keen-eyed,  perhaps,  but  with  about  the  reli- 
gious endowment  of  monkeys  —  on  the  absurdity 
and  futility  of  every  kind  of  mission. 


VIIT. 

Japax  has  just  now  reached  her  ebullient 
Sophomore  year  in  the  world-university 
curriculum.  No  doubt  the  Sophomore  year  is  a 
stage  of  inflation  necessary  to  jiass  through  before 
arriving  at  the  chastened  dignitj^  of  the  Senior. 
But  it  has  its  temporary  perils.  Small  wonder, 
then,  that  at  present  the  Japanese  are  topheavily 
overladen  with  conceit.  Only  to  think  of  it !  How 
comparatively  few  the  years  since  the  Imperial 
University  of  Tokyo  was  founded  under  the  actual 
title,  "  An  Institution  for  Examining  into  the 
Writings  of  the  Barbarians,"  —  Newton,  La  Place, 
Watt,  Lyell,  and  Darwin,  all  summed  up  under  that 
engaging  category !  Yet  already,  having  squeezed 
whatever  they  knew  out  of  German,  French,  Amer- 
ican, English  professors,  have  the  Jaj)anese  quickly 
sent  home  the  majority  of  them,  and  themselves 
taken  their  places ;  as  equally  they  have  done  with 
European  railway  contractors,  ci\'il  engineers,  ship- 
builders, and-locomotive  builders,  and  are  begin- 
ning to  do  even  with  Teutonic  brewers  of  lager 
beer.  Did  the  world  ever  see  the  like  I  Very 
natural  the  feeling  that  they  have  sucked  the 
whole  contents  of  the  Occidental  scientific  orange 
and  thrown  away  the  skin. 

Now,  it  would  be  entirely  feasible  to  ship  on 


90  JAPAN 

board  a  New  England  coaster  any  bright  yonng 
fellow  from  Cape  Cod,  and,  putting  into  his  hands 
a  sextant  and  giving  him  a  short  run  through 
Bowditch's  Navigator,  in  a  few  days,  to  enable  him 
to  take  to  a  hair  the  schooner's  exact  position  at 
noon.  Quite  pardonable  in  him,  moreover,  would 
it  be,  should  he  at  first  see  himself  in  the  light  of 
a  full-fledged  peer  of  Joshua,  who  commanded  the 
sun  and  moon  to  stand  still,  and  they  obeyed  him. 
None  the  less  might  not  his  mind  be  set  down  as 
reverentially  incomplete  should  he  fail,  on  maturer 
reflection,  to  admit  that  the  Jacob's  wrestle  of  Co- 
pernicus, Newton,  and  La  Place  to  wrest  from  the 
heavens  their  secret  was  entitled  to  a  modest  share 
of  credit  in  the  success  of  the  observation.  Any 
skilled  mechanic  can  make  a  sextant,  any  average 
intelligent  youth  use  it,  but  behind  it  lies  a  race 
of  intellectual  giants  and  the  sublime  mathematics 
of  infinite  space. 

The  art  of  war,  the  art  of  naval  construction, 
the  art  of  engineering,  the  art  of  organizing  com- 
mon schools,  universities,  upper  and  lower  houses 
of  legislation,  all  these  have  the  Japanese  borrowed 
as  achieved  results  from  more  advanced  nations. 
It  has  been  the  most  stupendous  piece  of  ab-extra 
imitation  the  world  ever  saw.  But  have  they  bor- 
rowed at  the  same  time  the  great  germinal  minds, 
the  inventive  genius,  the  depth  of  character,  the 
centuries  of  political  experience,  out  of  which 
these  things  have  come,  and  which  remain  to- 
day in  Europe  and  America  the  jjotency  and  pro- 
mise of  a  vast  succession  to  follow  ?     The  golden 


THE  CRUSADING  SPIRIT  91 

eggs  Japan  no  doubt  has,  but  has  she  the  prolific 
intellectual  goose  to  go  on  laying  new  ones  ? 

Very  superficially  as  yet  does  Japan  take  in  this 
weighty  previous  question.  Dazzled  with  excess 
of  light  reflected  from  the  material  triumphs  of 
modern  European  science,  she  mistakes  this  for 
the  whole  core  of  Western  greatness  and  force  of 
character.  As  she  thinks  with  superior  amuse- 
ment of  her  old  theory  of  earthquakes,  how  they 
were  caused  by  an  enormous  catfish  nine  hundred 
miles  long  that  underlay  their  main  island  and 
every  once  in  a  while  grew  so  mortally  tired  as  to 
have  to  flop  over  for  relief  on  to  his  other  side  ; 
and  as  she  contrasts  this  now  discarded  theory 
with  the  complete  seismometrical  apparatus  at  the 
Imperial  University  for  measuring  the  strength 
and  duration  of  every  shake  ;  very  properly  is  she 
as  proud  as  the  Cape  Cod  youth  handling  his  new 
sextant.  But  what  is  going  to  be  the  outcome  of 
such  a  sudden  revolution  from  tojj  to  bottom  of 
all  old  ideas  and  methods,  the  Japanese  will  never 
know  until  experience  shall  have  made  it  clear. 
Europe  quietly  grew  into  these  ideas,  Japan 
jumped  heels  over  head  into  them.  It  is  the  sur- 
face questions  i\\ey  have  so  far  attacked.  The 
scientific  broomstick  drudge,  after  the  analogy 
of  the  old  fairy  tale,  they  have  set  to  drawing 
water,  and  he  is  deluging  the  house  with  it  by  the 
bucketful;  but  the  formula  for  laying  him,  be- 
fore he  drowns  out  the  whole  family,  is  another 
matter. 


92  JAPAN 

No  one  can  watch  the  brilliancy  and  perfec- 
tion of  the  evolutions  of  the  Japanese  troops, 
can  note  her  huge  ironclads  and  the  steady  growth 
of  her  commercial  marine,  can  read  her  newspapers, 
or  catch  the  spirit  of  her  young  men,  without  feel- 
ing, as  it  were,  on  the  eve  of  a  new  crusade.  I  use 
the  word  crusade  deliberately.  Japan  is  on  fire 
with  the  sense  of  a  great  historical  mission.  She 
is  the  ordained  champion  of  the  new  ideas  of  the 
West  in  their  advance  on  the  immobility  of  the 
East.  Not  the  French,  when,  after  their  own  rev- 
olution, their  armies  swept  irresistibly  over  the  rest 
of  Europe,  to  destroy  the  last  remnants  of  Feudal- 
ism and  to  inaugurate  the  new  era  of  the  Rights  of 
Man,  were  inflamed  with  a  more  passionate  faith 
in  a  special  role  of  destiny. 

The  mercurial  temperament  has  ever  j)roved  a 
factor  to  be  reckoned  with  in  human  history  — 
quite  as  much  so  as  quicksilver  in  the  thermometers 
and  barometers  that  measure  temperature  and  at- 
mospheric pressure.  Again  and  again,  in  the  story 
of  France,  from  the  days  of  the  Crusades  to  the 
days  of  the  French  Revolution,  has  this  tempera- 
ment changed  the  whole  current  of  European  his- 
tory. Quick  to  adopt  new  ideas,  and  chivalrous  in 
championing  them,  France  has  always  been  the 
brilliant,  even  though  quicksilver,  Abelard  of  Eu- 
rope, the  intellectual  Hotspur.  Without  the  leaven 
of  her  ever-fermenting  spirit,  how  much  more 
slowly  would  have  risen  the  heavier  dough  of  Ger- 
many and  England !  True,  she  has  always  had 
the  "  faults  of  her  qualities,"  and  bitterly  has  she 
suffered  from  them. 


THE  CRUSADING  SPIRIT  93 

Now  very  keenly  do  the  Japanese  enjoy  being 
called  the  French  of  Asia,  and  not  unnaturally,  so 
strikingly  similar  are  their  virtues  and  vices.  Not 
that  the  Japanese  are  in  any  way  the  national 
equals  o£  the  French,  Little  do  they  take  it  in, 
what  a  wealth  of  historic  experience  and  of  the 
deepest  and  gravest  thought  in  literature,  morals, 
and  religion  furnishes  the  make-weight  to  Gallic 
lightness,  mockery,  and  impetuosity.  Still,  much 
is  there  in  the  old  Samurai  spirit  of  Japan  —  the 
valor,  the  patriotism,  the  artistic  courtesy,  the  loy- 
alty, the  contempt  of  gain  —  that  could  easily  take 
the  place  of  the  chivalry  of  France,  as  equally  there 
is  in  this  same  spirit  much  that  would  readily  lend 
itself  to  political  experiments  of  fatal  rashness  and 
to  factional  embroilments  of  internecine  ferocity. 

At  the  same  time,  along  with  this  quicksilver  of 
the  French  temperament,  the  Japanese  enjoy  the 
privilege  of  an  insular  position  that  gives  them 
substantially  the  same  advantage  in  respect  to  Asia 
that  England  has  always  held  in  respect  to  Europe, 
and  which  will  render  them  the  great  naval  power 
of  the  East.  Centuries  ago  they  beheaded  the  am- 
bassador and  destroyed  the  Invincible  Armada  of 
the  else  Irresistible  conqueror  Genghis  Khan  ;  and 
that,  too,  at  a  time  when  all  China  and  much  of 
India  submitted  to  his  power  and  to  that  of  his  suc- 
cessors. Thus,  in  the  Japan  of  to-day  do  we  see 
a  thoroughly  warlike  people  at  a  crisis  of  their  his- 
tory in  which  they  have  been  fused  into  a  unit  in 
flaming  patriotism  and  in  the  intoxication  of  new 
ideas.     In  all  this  lies,  I  am  sure,  the  prophecy  of 


94  JAPAN 

the  coming  national  Peter  the  Hermit,  who  is  to 
launch  the  new  crusade  of  the  long-gathering  hosts 
of  Western  thought  and  civilization  on  the  immo- 
bility of  the  East.i 

The  Mediterranean  has  had  its  great  day, 
and  still  has  it.  The  Atlantic  has  had  its 
great  day,  and  still  has  it.  Now  is  dawning  the 
great  day  of  the  Pacific.  Face  to  face  with  one 
another,  on  the  opposite  sides  of  this  mighty  ex- 
l^anse,  Japan  and  the  United  States,  along  with 
Siberian  Russia,  are  destined  to  j^lay  an  imperial 
role  on  the  stage  of  the  coming  future  of  Asia.  It 
is  only  the  beginning  of  things  that  is  witnessed 
to-day  ;  but  out  of  the  shadowy  future  already  loom 
vague  but  overwhelming  shapes  of  movements  in- 
volving a  new  destiny  for  hundreds  of  millions  of 
people.     The  United  States  opened  this  fifth  act 

■^  This  was  written  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Japanese-Chinese 
war.  Nothing  in  the  results  that  have  followed  can  surprise  any 
one  who  has  studied  the  situation  in  the  two  countries.  A  fight 
between  Japan  and  China  is  like  a  race  between  two  steamboats, 
the  one  with  a  paddle  wheel  on  either  side,  the  other  with  a  pad- 
dle wheel  on  one  side  and  a  clumsy  oar  on  the  other.  In  China 
everything  is  mongrel.  She  has  adoj»ted  just  so  much  of  West- 
ern science  and  civilization  as  has  been  temporarily  pounded  into 
her  by  England  and  France,  and  despised  the  rest  of  it.  Japan, 
on  the  other  hanfl,  has  adopted  everything  to  the  last  military 
shoestring.  Moreover,  in  China,  there  is  no  patriotism  and  little 
or  no  trust  between  men.  The  government  is  rotten  to  the  core. 
The  officer  has  no  faith  in  his  soldier,  nor  the  soldier  in  his  officer, 
nor  has  either  faith  that  the  report  of  the  numbers,  the  ammuni- 
tion, the  provisions  on  hand,  are  not  totally  false.  This  is  one  of 
the  drawbacks  of  a  system  of  universal  cheating  and  lying,  at 
any  rate  when  applied  to  the  art  of  war. 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  PACIFIC  95 

in  the  great  drama  of  historic  humanity  when  she 
sent  out  Commodore  Perry  with  his  fleet,  to  force 
Japan  into  the  alliance  of  the  nations.  Little  did 
she  dream  what  she  was  doing.  Now,  however,  that 
it  is  done,  let  the  two  powers  cidtivate  the  friend- 
liest of  relations,  and  feel  themselves  natural  and 
inseparable  allies.  Above  all,  outright  must  it 
be  recognized  that  the  day  is  past  for  any  longer 
regarding  Japan  from  the  mere  sentimental  point 
of  view  of  a  land  of  artistic  impressionists.  Her 
artisan  class,  the  most  deftly-trained  and  the  most 
cheaply  fed  in  the  world,  is  soon  to  render  her 
a  truly  formidable  competitor  in  the  industrial 
struggle  of  the  nations. 

Fascinating  has  been  the  experience  of  a 
two  months'  stay  in  Japan,  storing  the  mind 
with  delightful  memories  it  will  always  be  a  happi- 
ness to  revive.  The  natural  beauties  of  the  land 
no  words  can  duly  praise,  —  its  chains  of  jjictur- 
esque  mountains  everywhere  ;  its  seacoast  lines, 
varied  in  outline  and  steeped  in  as  poetic  an  at- 
mosphere as  those  of  southern  Italy  ;  its  luxuriant 
and  profusely  varied  flora ;  its  innumerable  and 
commanding  temple  sites  at  Tokyo,  Kyoto,  Navas, 
everywhere,  with  their  solemn  Druid  groves.  Add 
to  all  this  ever  present  beauty  of  nature,  the  per- 
petual open-air  comedy  going  on  in  the  street  life 
of  the  people,  and  it  will  be  felt  what  elements  of 
fascination  are  ever  before  the  eyes  of  the  traveler 
in  Japan.  So  little  apparent  friction  in  the 
crowded  daily  intercourse,  such  looks  of  childlike 


96  JAPAN 

amiability  on  the  faces  of  tlie  young  women  !  Call 
these,  if  you  will,  only  skin-deep,  still  the  skin  is 
about  all  we  see  of  the  great  majority  of  our  fellow 
creatures,  and  how  far  j^leasanter  is  it  to  look  at 
when  riijpling  with  smiles  than  when  fretted  with 
careworn  or  angry  lines  !  In  Japan  one  perforce 
chimes  in  with  Goethe's  line,  — 

"Am  farbigen  Abglanz  Laben  wir  das  Leben." 

So,  a  loving  good-by  to  the  Flowery  Kingdom, 
the  Land  of  the  Rising  Sun,  and  good-by  to  all 
these  lucubrations  on  her  past,  present,  and  future ! 
She  has  broken  away  from  the  sleep  and  stagnation 
of  Asia,  has  quit  the  quiet  security  of  her  land- 
locked Inland  Sea,  and  tempted  the  open  main. 
Welcome  to  the  richer  and  deeper,  the  far  more 
awful,  far  more  sublime  inheritance  of  the  best  in 
the  western  world  !  May  she  breathe  around  the 
sterner  elements  of  this  inheritance  something  of 
her  own  ineffable  charm  ! 


CHINA 


After  being  subjected  for  two  months,  as  in 
Japan,  to  an  unintennitting  stream  of  novel 
impressions,  what  a  wonderfully  restful  experience 
to  feel  one's  self  again  at  sea  !  It  is  like  putting  a 
tired  child  into  the  cradle,  and  gently  rocking  him 
to  sleep,  —  at  least  when  kindly  Nurse  Pacific  re- 
frains from  setting  too  thumping  a  Hibernian  foot 
on  the  rocker  and  rolling  the  baby  from  side  to 
side  to  the  croon  of  a  typhoon.  No  loving  mother, 
however,  could  have  been  more  gentle  with  treadle 
and  lullaby  than  the  Pacific  with  us,  all  the  way 
from  Nagasaki,  Japan,  to  Shanghai,  China,  and  all 
the  way  from  Shanghai  to  Hong  Kong.  Oli,  the 
boon,  each  day,  of  the  quiet  monotony  of  the  sea, 
unbroken  by  the  intrusion  of  a  whale  or  a  porpoise  I 
How  it  sponges  up  all  nervously  irritating  brain 
impressions,  and  holds  them  in  neiitral  solution  ! 
Indeed,  a  sea  voyage  round  the  world,  all  the  way 
by  land,  would  result  in  chronic  insomnia.  So 
blessino-s  on  the  man  who  first  invented  for  the 
globetrotter's  sanity  the  sleep  of  the  China  Sea 
after  Japan  ! 

In    Shanghai  we  stopped  but  twenty-four 

hours.     This  was  long  enough,  however,  to 

furnish  a  few  first-hand  impressions  of  the  more 


98  CHINA 

salient  points  of  difference  between  the  Chinese  and 
the  Japanese.  In  Japan  one  is  perpetually  inter- 
ested in  observing  the  ways  in  which  the  race  has 
worked  up  into  its  own  shapes  the  ideas,  manners, 
arts,  manufactures,  the  architecture,  philosophy, 
and  religion,  originally  derived  from  China  through 
Corea.  Now  at  last  the  chance  to  see  a  little  of 
the  rock  from  which  these  Japanese  people  were 
intellectually  and  religiously  hewn  !  A  rock,  in 
fact,  it  is  in  comparison  with  the  sinuous,  spark- 
ling, restlessly  mobile  waters  that  have  ebbed  and 
flowed  round  it  for  centuries  in  the  Land  of  the 
Rising  Sun.  Indeed,  striking  as  is  the  contrast 
one  feels  the  first  time  he  crosses  the  Channel  from 
France  to  England,  between  the  lithe,  vivacious, 
socially  charming  characteristics  of  the  one  peo- 
ple and  the  more  heavily  moulded  and  undemon- 
strative nature  of  the  other,  far  greater  is  the 
contrast  experienced  on  first  setting  foot  on  the 
soil  of  China,  after  a  run  of  thirty  hours  from 
Jaj^an. 

In  our  own  country  we  see  but  one  variety  of  the 
Chinaman,  —  the  laundry  variety,  taken  from  the 
lowest  class  of  the  indoor  coolies,  and  cowed,  too, 
at  that,  by  the  democratic  exuberance  of  our  hood- 
lums. He  is  no  more  like  the  breed  at  home  than 
if  he  had  been  boiled  along  with  the  shirts  in 
one  of  his  own  laundry-vats,  and  lifted  out  on  a 
stick  shrunk  and  dripping.  In  his  own  land  John 
Chinaman  is  a  big,  portly  fellow,  who  walks  as 
though  he  owned  the  earth.  He  could  swallow  an 
average  Japanese  without  looldng  larger.     Vanity 


CHINESE  CONSERVATISM  99 

and  conceit  are  no  part  of  him,  as  they  are  of  the 
Japanese.  Indeed,  vanity  and  conceit  imply  a 
measure  of  dependence  on  the  estimate  of  others. 
For  four  thousand  years  the  Chinaman  has  lived 
above  this  weakness,  in  an  indomitable  fortress  of 
pride.  Realities  are  simply  realities.  Ages  before 
the  European  emerged  from  the  lowest  barbarism, 
if,  indeed,  he  has  yet  emerged  from  it,  the  China- 
man knew  everything  and  possessed  everything 
worth  having.  He  has  simply  to  repeat  the  past, 
as  the  planets  their  revolutions.  As  for  Confucius, 
he  had  looked  into  the  Avhole  matter  of  railroads, 
telegraph  lines,  and  the  spinning-jenny,  forty  cen- 
turies back,  and  dismissed  them  as  beneath  con- 
tempt. 

Now,  in  this  light-minded  world  of  ours,  it  is 
very  instructive  to  fall  in  with  something  thorough- 
bred, to  see  a  fundamental  principle,  like  that  of 
the  "  wisdom  of  our  ancestors,"  stoutly  mounted, 
and  then  ridden,  spite  of  wall  or  ditch,  straight 
across  country  to  its  last  break-neck  logical  conse- 
quences. At  home  in  America,  we  pride  ourselves 
on  having  evolved  certain  very  creditably  ossified 
types  of  the  conservative,  —  now  in  a  sporadic  j^ro- 
fessor,  now  in  a  high  and  dry  divine,  here  in  an 
Anolomaniac  member  of  an  exclusive  club.  In 
China,  the  most  obstinately-rooted  of  these,  from 
Boston  or  New  York,  would  be  set  up  on  steeples 
for  weathercocks,  the  only  function  such  variable 
creatures  would  be  thought  fit  for. 

Never  the  doggedest  aider  and  abettor  of  the  past 
with   us,  but   inconsistently  he  will  abandon  the 


100  CHINA 

whole  principle  by  giving  in  to  lucifer  matches  su- 
perseding the  flint  and  tinder  box,  to  gas  invading 
the  sacred  realm  of  whale  oil,  or,  finally  to  the 
electric  light  advancing  on  the  more  ancient  reign 
of  gas.  Dignify  such  thistledown  mobility  with 
the  august  title  of  conservatism  I  No  I  there  is  but 
one  portrait  of  an  Occidental  conservative  that 
would  awaken  in  the  breast  of  a  Chinaman  an  emo- 
tion of  respect.  It  was  a  caricature  that  was  drawn 
fifty  years  ago  in  Vienna,  in  which,  on  the  Day  of 
Creation,  Prince  Metternich  was  depicted  wringing 
his  hands  in  agony  and  supplicating  Deity,  "  O 
God,  let  us  preserve  the  Chaos !  "  The  Chinese 
would  have  taken  this  caricature  in  perfect  serious- 
ness, and  have  set  it  up  in  a  temple  for  the  edifica- 
tion of  the  young. 

Custom,  then,  in  China,  the  thing  that  has  been, 
is  the  one  immutable  law  of  the  universe,  to  be  re- 
spected as  one  respects  summer  and  winter,  night 
and  day.  Do  you  foreigners  cavil  that  our  streets 
are  filthy  and  pestilential  ?  It  is  not  our  custom  to 
clean  and  deodorize  them.  Do  you  insinuate  that 
our  frightful  famines  and  inundations  might  be 
stopped?  It  is  not  our  custom  to  stop  famines  and 
inundations.  Far  rather  would  we  die  of  hunger 
or  be  drowned  out  like  rats  than  insult  the  wisdom 
of  our  ancestors  by  such  reflections  on  their  time- 
honored  ways.  Budge,  then,  the  Chinaman  will 
not,  more  than  a  granite  boulder,  unless  pried  out 
with  fulcrum  and  crowbar.  Here  at  last,  thank 
Heaven !  the  i)hilosophic  tourist,  weary  of  such 
pitiful  will-o'-the-wisps  as  we  have  at  home,  con- 


SHANGHAI  101 

templates  something  as  stable  in  comparison  as  a 
fixed  star  to  a  flighty  comet,  a  wood-tick  to  a  devil's 
darning-needle. 

For  fifty  miles  before  reaching  the  north- 
erly coast  of  China,  one  feels  himself  al- 
ready developing  a  fairly  "  continental  conscious- 
ness." It  is  stirred  up  from  the  depths  of  one's 
being  in  sympathy  with  the  mud  of  the  Yang-tse- 
Kiang  River,  poured  out  on  so  stupendous  a  scale  as 
to  lay  down,  in  vast  realms  of  oozy  flats,  the  pro- 
phetic foundations  of  a  future  rice-paradise  for  mil- 
lions, and  still  further  to  spread  its  turbid  flood  over 
countless  square  miles  of  otherwise  bright  blue  sea. 
The  eye  looks  on  with  awe  at  so  enormous  a  process 
of  world-building.  Nothing,  one  feels,  but  a  vast 
continent,  with  far-away  ranges  of  colossal  moun- 
tain chains,  mighty  river  systems  thousands  of 
miles  in  length,  can  furnish  the  material  for  such 
work  as  this.  Bread  enough  to  feed  four  hundred 
millions  of  mouths,  and  all  this  fertilizing  mud  to 
spare  !  surely  this  must  be  China  I 

Sailing  up  one  of  the  streams  of  the  immense 
delta,  stretching  along  the  coast  a  hundred  miles, 
our  steamship  anchored  oft'  Wusung  to  take  in 
cargo,  while  her  passengers  in  a  little  steam-launch 
ran  up  the  river  fourteen  miles  farther  to  Shang- 
hai. 


Europe    and    China   hobnobbing !    such  is 

the  scene  Shanghai  presents  ;  only  that  the 

hobnobbing  is  done  arms-length,  centuries-length, 


102  CHINA 

race-length  apart.  Here,  on  the  one  hand,  a  beau- 
tiful European  city  ;  open  to  breeze  and  sunshine ; 
with  stately  buildings  and  lovely  gardens ;  its 
broad,  park-like  quay,  shaded  with  rows  of  trees, 
running  along  the  river,  and  everything  breathing 
sweet  and  healthful  air !  There,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  Chinese  walled  town  of  200,000  inhabitants,  its 
streets  narrow  and  filthy,  its  people  pigging  in  to- 
gether in  tenements  which  are  perpetual  breeding- 
places  of  disease !  Cheek  by  jowl,  for  fifty  years 
have  stood,  these  two  cities  ;  the  one  steadily  aspir- 
ing after  growing  beauty,  comfort,  healthfulness, 
the  other  serenely  satisfied  with  its  aboriginal  per- 
fection. Shakespeare  and  the  Chinese  are  at  one 
in  the  feeling  that  — 

"  To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily, 
To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet.  .  .  . 
Is  wasteful  and  ridiculous  excess." 

As  over  against  two  such  authorities,  far  be  it 
from  me  to  express  a  personal  judgment.  I  am  a 
simple  reporter  of  impressions,  a  disinterested  ob- 
server of  the  ways  of  my  fellow-creatures,  as  they 
have  been  subjected  to  their  varying  planetary  de- 
velopment. All  I  see  is  the  reason  why  these  two 
cities  have  not  exerted  a  whit  of  perceptible  influ- 
ence on  one  another.  The  English,  French,  and 
Germans  still  follow  their  own  ever-changing  meth- 
ods. If  there  is  a  new  and  promising-anti-cholera 
mixture,  they  take  doses  of  it,  to  decide  which  is  the 
better  man,  cholera  or  mixture  ;  a  new  germ-killing 
disinfectant,  they  set  on  a  free  fight  between  it  and 
microbes ;  a  new  astronomical  or  metaphysical  the- 


SHANGHAI  103 

ory  of  the  universe,  they  import  the  book  describ- 
ing it,  and  here  and  there  one  of  them,  perhaps, 
reads  it.  Of  all  this  freakiness  of  the  innovating 
temperament,  scarcely  a  trace  in  China  town ! 
Fonl  smells,  cholera,  bacteria,  have  their  prescrip- 
tive rights  to  be  treated  in  accordance  with  the 
wisdom  of  our  ancestors,  and  are  so  treated,  to  the 
mutual  satisfaction,  apparently,  of  germ  and  human 
gerrainator,  as  they  develop  amicably  together. 
So  long,  then,  as  the  two  have  mastered  the  art  of 
thus  living  in  happy  concord,  why  inaugurate  be- 
tween them  the  internecine  warfare  set  on  by  the 
Englishman  ? 

Now,  to  one  just  arrived  from  Japan,  here  is  a 
vastly  instructive  sight  in  the  way  of  comparative 
historical  study.  Through  the  force  of  a  precisely 
similar  object  lesson,  the  same  fifty  years  in  which 
all  this  has  been  going  on  in  Shanghai  have  revo- 
lutionized the  other  country.  The  moment  the 
Japanese  got  a  chance  to  see  a  better  thing  in  the 
way  of  disinfectant,  Herbert  Spencer,  Scott's  Emul- 
sion of  Cod  Liver  Oil,  astronomical  observatory 
for  studying  the  real  motions  of  the  celestial  bodies, 
they  adopted  it.  Peremptorily,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  Chinese  despised  and  rejected  it,  on  the  abso- 
lute ground  that  no  good  thing  could  come  out  of 
the  Nazareth  of  ''  outside  barbarians  "  and  "  foreio:n 
devils."  Their  logic  was  perfect,  though  their 
premise  may  have  been  an  instance  of  too  hasty 
induction. 

Contempt  is  a  dangerous,  though  no  doubt  a 
soothing  quality.      Not  that  the  Europeans  do  not 


104  CHINA 

entertain  it  liberally  toward  the  Chinese.  But  the 
return  contempt  of  the  Chinese  in  their  pig-sty  citj' 
for  the  dwellers  in  the  clean,  beautiful  European 
city  is,  in  comparison,  colossally  vaster.  It  is  a 
contempt  Atlas  in  height,  continental  in  breadth, 
oceanic  in  depth,  —  a  contempt  in  sfecula  saeculo- 
lum.  One  is  awed  by  it.  One  yearns  for  a  mas- 
siveness  of  nature  capable  of  so  Mt.  Blanc  a  solid- 
ity of  contempt-sensation.  I  repeat  it,  something 
sublime  is  there  in  beholding  for  once  the  virtue  of 
conservatism  developed  to  Himalayan  proportions. 
If  Confucius  really  did  this,  all  of  himself,  then  I 
rank  him  next  to  the  law  of  gravitation. 

Kind,  though  no  doubt  nationally  preju- 
diced friends  in  Shanghai  had  strongly 
advised  my  friend  and  me  not  to  attempt  an  explo- 
ration of  the  Chinese  city.  They  said  it  was  some- 
times perilous  to  life  and  limb,  and  at  all  times  an 
exposure  to  infectious  disease,  and  that  for  twenty 
years  they  had  not  thrust  their  own  noses  inside 
the  walls.  None  the  less  we  went,  and  went 
alone,  —  with  reprehensible  traces  in  our  breasts, 
I  fear,  of  that  physical  contempt  for  Chinese 
prowess  engendered  in  the  American  mind  by  home 
contact  with  none  but  the  bleached-out  laundry 
species.  For  hours  we  strayed  at  our  own  sweet 
will,  penetrating  all  quarters,  and  frequently  get- 
ting hopelessly  lost,  only  at  last  to  find  ourselves 
again.  The  tastelessness  and  ugliness  of  the  scene 
to  one  fresh  from  Japan  vras  the  main  impression 
the  sordid  materialism  of  aspect  everything  wore. 


SHANGHAI  105 

No  doubt  there  were  plenty  of  good,  patient,  excel- 
lent people  there.  No  doubt  there  was  many  a 
learned  pundit  ruminating  the  Chinese  classics  in 
many  a  house  we  passed,  and,  let  us  hope,  thanking 
Heaven  he  was  not  as  either  of  those  two  "  foreign- 
devils  "  going  by.  Still,  no  use  is  there  in  at- 
tempting to  account  for  Chinese  Shanghai  on  the 
score  of  its  being  a  seaport  town,  corrupted  by  the 
imitation  of  foreign  manners  and  vices.  The 
trouble  with  it  is  that  it  has  imitated  nothing,  has 
kept  itself  so  simon  pure  in  its  ancestral  nastiness. 
None  the  less,  how  strong  and  cheerful  the 
people  looked  !  What  an  effective  system  here  on 
hand  for  killing  off  the  sickly  and  feeble,  and  leav- 
ing none  but  the  cholera  and  small-pox-proof !  The 
survival  of  the  fittest  for  standing  such  conditions 
of  foul  air,  crowded  quarters,  barbaric  medical 
treatment,  such  was  the  principle  of  natural  selec- 
tion palpably  at  work.  Still,  one  man's  meat  is 
another  man's  poison ;  as  equally  experiments  in 
natural  selection  require  successive  generations  to 
work  in.  So  at  last  my  friend  and  I  began  to  doubt 
our  personal  fitness  to  survive  much  longer.  The 
one  predominant  feeling  with  us  both,  as  we 
emerged  from  the  gate,  was  a  longing  to  be  hung 
out  for  a  month  on  a  clothes-line,  in  a  gale  of  wind. 
Carbolic  acid  and  chloride  of  lime  seemed  perfumes 
of  a  rarer  fragrance  than  heliotrope  or  tea  roses. 

However,  a  drive  of  several  hours  out  into 

the  country  now  effected  an  aeration  quite 

as  brisk  as  hanging  out  on  a  clothes-line,  along 


106  CHINA 

with  wider  advantages  for  enjoying  scenery.  Very 
depressing-  the  aspect,  it  must  be  admitted,  that  is 
imparted  to  the  immediate  surroundings  of  this 
especial  Chinese  city  by  the  enormous  stretches 
given  up  to  burial-j^laces  for  the  dead.  Here,  if 
anywhere  in  China,  —  especially  when  it  is  re- 
called that  ancestor  worship  is  the  devoutest  form 
of  religion  that  prevails,  —  one  would  look  for  some 
imaginative  expression  of  sentiment,  some  tou(!h  of 
beauty  or  ideality,  as  in  all  the  cemeteries  of  Japan, 
where  a  like  ancestral  faith  is  rife.  No  suggestion 
is  there  of  any  craving  akin  to  this.  Few  or  no 
trees,  no  charm  of  gi^eensward  and  constant  floral 
offerings,  no  venerable  moss-grown  monuments, 
nothins:  but  low  mounds  of  naked  or  weed-2,rown 
soil,  and  these  by  the  million !  Perforce,  one  calls 
up  the  endless  stretches  of  prairie-dog  burrows  on 
the  Colorado  and  Montana  plains,  only  to  be  filled 
with  the  same  dazed  wonder  there  evoked  as  to 
how  each  several  prairie-dog  household  ever  con- 
trives to  feel  sure  of  its  own  domestic  hole.  With 
such  back-lying  successions  of  departed  ancestors 
to  keep  in  ever  green  remembrance,  it  must  be  a 
liberal  education  in  itself  to  know  just  where  to 
find  them. 

Once,  however,  out  beyond  these  dreary  wastes, 
there  opens  up  a  sight  that  cannot  but  inspire  deep 
reverence  for  China.  The  marvelous  cultivation, 
the  patient,  untiring  industry  that  wrings  the  bread 
of  millions  out  of  the  soil  of  these  vast  river  bot- 
toms, the  cheerfulness  and  solid,  practical  good 
sense  of  the  farming  people  here  is  something  to 


SHANGHAI  107 

call  out  deep-rooted  respect  for  millions  of  human 
beings  under  such  stern  stress  of  the  law,  "  In  the 
sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread,  till  thou 
return  unto  the  ground." 

No  wonder  these  people  are  averse  to  change ! 
They  have  reached  a  state  of  stable  equilibrium. 
They  have  got  adjusted  like  the  patient  ox  to  the 
yoke,  know  just  where  it  presses  and  how  best  to 
ease  it,  and  do  not  want  to  be  readjusted  to  a  new- 
fangled one.  Century-old  products  of  these  monot- 
onous levels,  these  sluggish  rivers  and  canals,  these 
uniform  methods  of  cidtivation,  their  muscles  have 
become  solidly  set  to  a  jjlodding  gait  and  their 
brains  to  a  gait  equally  plodding.  Expatiate,  if 
you  will,  to  a  heavily  moulded  plough  horse  on  the 
exhilaration  felt  by  the  fast  trotter,  and  invite  him 
on  to  the  track  to  share  it!  The  plough  horse 
might  be  misguided  enough  to  make  a  spurt  for 
twenty  rods.  Far  more  settled  in  his  solid  mus- 
cular convictions,  the  plodding  Chinese  country- 
man! 

No  !  to  do  over  again  the  same  old  thing  in  the 
same  old  way,  to  think  over  again  the  same  old 
maxim  in  the  same  old  way,  this  is  to  "  possess  the 
earth."  Nerves  have  they  none.  Of  the  heights 
of  ecstasy,  the  abysses  of  despair,  these  modern 
physiological  inventions  entail  on  other  unfortunate 
people,  they  are  stolidly  oblivious.  They  can  sleep 
under  a  lullaby  of  gongs,  and  with  wide-open 
mouths  full  of  meandering  flies.  What  big  bodies 
and  big  bowling-alley-ball  heads  of  real  liguum- 
vitae  texture !     While  European   nations  are  ex- 


108  CHINA 

hausting  in  excitement  their  nervous  energies,  these 
fellows  are  storing  theirs  up  ;  lying  fallow  a  few 
thousand  years,  as  did  our  vast  western  prairies 
against  the  grain  crops  that  should  one  day  be  de- 
manded of  them.  True,  their  existence  now  is 
commonplace  and  matter  of  fact,  largely  devoid  of 
ideality,  devoid  of  imagination.  Of  anything  like 
the  life  of  chivalrous  love  for  woman,  of  consecra- 
tion to  an  ideal  of  a  great  future  for  hmnanity,  they 
know  little  and  care  less.  Still,  one  cannot  but 
feel  there  is  latent  in  them  the  stuff  of  a  giant 
future,  after  once  the  mighty  throes  of  revolution 
that  are  at  hand  shall  have  steeped  them  in  scald- 
ing tears  and  chilled  them  in  icy  waters  and  forged 
them  under  the  trip-hammer  blows  of  sure-coming 
destiny. 

Out  there,  far  down  the  river,  as  we  are 
driving  back,  we  see  looming  up  a  huge 
ironclad.  It  is  Chinese.  On  the  river-bank, 
farther  yet  below,  stretch  the  long  lines  of  a  power- 
ful modern  fort.  It  is  Chinese.  What  do  these 
mean?  They  mean  that  a  power  mightier  even 
than  century-old  Chinese  conservatism  is  on  the 
field,  that  Europe  has  already  invaded  and  par- 
tially conquered  China  with  the  ideas  of  a  new  age. 
True,  these  ideas  had  to  be  driven  home  by  the 
thunderbolt  of  war.  They  were  never  accepted 
of  free  choice,  as  in  JajDan.  When  England  and 
France  destroyed  China's  fleets  of  junks,  took  Can- 
ton, took  Pekin,  then  China  had  to  begin  to  think 
on  new  lines,  had  to  submit  to  the  crowbar  prying 


SHANGHAI  109 

out  some  of  the  sullen,  dogmatic  boulders  deep 
sunk  in  the  tenacious  soil  of  her  mind.  Hauling 
down  the  imperial  flag  from  the  Pekin  palace  was 
as  nothing  to  hauling  down  the  flag  of  the  century- 
old  monomania  of  ancestral  pride.  But  down  it 
had  to  come ;  and  perforce  China  sent  to  Eurojre 
for  military  engineers,  ship-builders,  drill-masters 
for  her  troops.  Forts  were  constructed,  arsenals 
and  ship-yards  founded,  schools  of  instruction  es- 
tablished,—  only  of  course  to  be  suffered  to  fall 
into  gradual  decay.  None  the  less  the  iron  wedge 
of  destiny  had  entered,  and  begun  to  split  rifts  in 
the  tough  old  gnarled  log.  And  now  to  all  this  is 
added  the  terrible  gadfly  of  Japan  anchored  just 
off  her  coasts ;  the  gadfly  become  a  hornet  on  a 
mission,  with  all  the  modern  scientific  apparatus  at 
its  tail's  end  for  stinging  home  the  inflammation 
of  the  new  ideas.  One  stands  hushed  in  awe  to 
reflect  on  what  all  this  inevitably  involves  in  the 
future  of  four  hundred  million  people. 


II. 


It  was  a  charming  run  of  three  days  from 
Shanghai,  and  never  before  in  life  did  I 
chant  more  rapturously  the  rarely  quoted  line  of 
Gray,  "  AVhere  ignorance  is  bliss,"  than  on  sailing 
at  sunrise  through  the  strait  that  winds  its  pictur- 
esque way  into  Hong  Kong  harbor.  About  the 
island  of  Hong  Kong,  whether  it  was  flat  or  per- 
pendicular, prosaic  or  picturesque,  I  knew  abso- 
lutely nothing.  Suddenly,  however,  on  stepping 
out  on  deck,  what  should  be  the  revelation  but  a 
magnificent  archipelago  of  islands  like  Mt.  Deserts, 
though  on  a  hundredfold  grander  scale !  One 
could  have  weeded  out  a  dozen  Mt.  Deserts  without 
leaving  the  marine  paradise  before  the  eyes  a  whit 
less  attractive.  Then  came  the  sail  through  the 
strait,  a  mile  to  two  miles  in  width,  and  shut  in 
on  either  hand  by  mountains.  The  coloring  was 
indescribably  beautiful.  Largely  naked  of  vegeta- 
tion, their  tops  covered  with  dry  bamboo  grass,  and 
their  flanks  a  mingling  of  red  granite  and  of  red, 
yellow,  and  whitish  clays  and  gravels,  they  fairly 
palpitated  in  the  glow  of  the  semi-tropical  sun. 
Indeed,  as  I  later  found,  this  vivid  glow  charac- 
terizes the  aspect  of  the  mountains  all  day  long. 
Look  out  over  the  harbor,  even  at  noon,  and  you 


HONG  KONG  111 

would  thiuk  the  ranges,  completely  environing  it, 
were  steeped  in  warm  sunset  light.  At  home  we 
find  fault  with  our  sunsets,  beautiful  as  they  are 
while  they  last,  because  just  as  we  are  fairly  yield- 
ing ourselves  to  the  rapture  of  them,  the  curtain 
is  rung  down  and  they  are  gone.  Here  in  Hong- 
Kong  this  little  aesthetic  objection  is  removed  by 
keeping  them  flushed  and  aglow  all  day  long. 
Perhaps,  in  China,  even  sunsets  have  grown  con- 
servative, and  dislike  to  change. 

Once  through  the  strait  and  into  the  harbor,  the 
city  itself  is  another  delightful  surprise.  With 
only  a  narrow  selvage  of  level  ground  along  the 
water,  its  houses,  many  of  them  spacious  and  no- 
ble mansions,  with  beautiful  gardens,  rise,  terrace 
on  terrace,  up  the  flank  of  an  abrupt  mountain, 
eighteen  hundred  feet  high,  it  topmost  summit 
crowned  with  villas  and  hotels  in  which  Euro- 
peans seek  refuge  from  the  overpowering  heat  of 
the  summer.  One  would  think  himself  in  Genoa, 
so  strikingly  similar  is  the  architectural  effect. 

Only  forty  years  ago  this  beautiful  island  was  a 
nest  of  Chinese  pirates.  Even  at  a  far  later  date, 
a,  European  took  his  life  in  his  hand  if  he  ventured 
alone  a  mile  out  of  the  settlement,  or  embarked  at 
night  in  a  sampan  for  his  ship.  To-day,  in  charm- 
ing contrast,  the  most  blind-drunk  sailor,  with  just 
consciousness  enough  left  to  know  he  wants  to  be 
lowed  out  and  put  aboard  at  midnight,  has  the 
tegis  of  his  country  lovingly  extended  over  him 
in  the  shape  of  a  gilt-buttoned  official  taking  the 
number  of  the  sampan,  giving  it  just  fifteen  min- 


112  CHINA 

utes  to  get  back,  and,  in  event  of  an  instant's  over- 
stay, filing  a  signal  that  forthwith  sets  the  harbor 
swarming  with  armed  launches.  Thus  by  one 
electi'ic  flash  of  the  higher  civilization  is  murder 
discouraged  in  the  Chinaman,  and  the  mind  of  the 
European  seafaring  man  relieved  from  the  cor- 
rosion of  anxiety  as  to  just  how  much  it  may  be 
wisest  to  drink  ashore.  Why  the  superiority  of 
such  a  system  is  not  immediately  apparent  to  the 
Celestial  mind  is  a  standing  marvel.  And  yet  the 
sampan-scullers  still  insist  that  the  older  way  was 
the  better. 

Very  curious  does  it  seem,  indeed  quite  inter- 
national, to  find  that  the  policemen  in  Hong  Kong 
are  big  red-turbaned  Sikhs  from  India.  It  gives 
one  a  fresh  conception  of  the  resources  England 
has  to  draw  on.  Equally  curious  is  it  to  inspect 
the  immense  Chinese  quarter  of  the  city,  with 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  inhabitants,  and 
to  see  how  much  in  the  way  of  wider  streets, 
sweeter  sanitation,  and  the  subjection  of  small-pox 
to  the  quill  is  possible.  Not  that  it  will  do  to 
make  too  hasty  an  induction  that  this  is  one  proof 
more  that  the  "  quill  is  mightier  than  the  sword," 
for  here  the  two  divide  the  honors.  The  quill 
has  a  hilt  and  a  strong  arm  behind  it  to  drive  it  in. 
"  Hinc  nice  lachrymce  "  when  the  British  doctors 
go  round ',  along  with  some  savage  fights  for  "  the 
wisdom  of  our  ancestors."  But  Hong  Kong  be- 
longs to  England,  and  here  the  "foreign  devil" 
has  his  own  "  outside  barbarian  "  will. 


CANTON  RIVER  113 

Canton  lies  ninety-five  miles  away  from 
Hong-  Kong,  up  an  enormous  river,  which 
—  for  fear  of  misspelling  it,  should  I  attempt  the 
Chinese  name  —  I  will  call,  as  the  English  do,  the 
Canton  River.  We  embarked  at  five  P.  M.  on  a 
fair-sized  steamboat,  the  lower  deck  of  which  was 
littered  with  a  swarm  of  third-class  Chinese,  pigging 
in  together  ;  while  the  upper  deck  was  set  apart, 
forward  for  respectable  Chinese,  and  aft  for  Eu- 
ropeans. The  respectable  Chinese  furnished  their 
own  bedding  and  opium,  and  lay,  cheek  by  jowl, 
beside  one  another  ;  while  the  Europeans  had  state- 
rooms to  themselves,  with  soap,  towels,  and  other 
foreign  prejudices. 

Scarcely  had  we  started  when  an  American  lady 
came  up  to  me  in  anxiety,  and  asked,  "  What 's 
the  reason  there  is  a  sword  in  my  room?  "  Indeed, 
pistols  and  rifles  were  everywhere  lying  around 
handy ;  but  the  lady  in  question,  who  had  never 
at  home  observed  on  the  Fall  River  boats  this 
especial  kind  of  life-saving  apparatus,  seemed 
greatly  nonplussed.  So,  to  relieve  her  feelings,  I 
was  forced  to  tell  her  that  the  sword  was  for  her  to 
defend  herself  with  to  the  last  gasp,  if  the  Chinese 
should  attempt  to  seize  the  boat,  murder  the  pas- 
sengers, and  loot  their  trunks :  further  calling  her 
attention  to  certain  strong  iron  gratings  that  had 
been  let  down  and  clamped  over  the  gangways  from 
the  lower  to  the  upper  deck.  She  at  once  became 
composed,  as  the  New  England  woman  always  is 
when  she  learns  the  reason  why. 

These  little  preliminaries  were  not  indications  of 


114  CHINA 

a  purely  sportive  fancy  on  the  part  of  our  captain. 
Many  the  steamboat  that  has  been  served  this  turn 
by  pirates  in  the  guise  of  passengers,  the  last  in- 
stance occurring  but  two  years  ago.  Our  own  trip, 
however,  proved  entirely  uneventful ;  and  we  could 
only  hope  that  the  swarm  on  the  lower  deck  had 
not  had  their  feelings  unduly  hurt  by  the  seeming 
distrust  implied  in  the  iron  gratings.  Still,  it  was 
to  be  set  down  as  another  agreeable  and  romantic 
surprise  to  find  piracy  still  so  rife  in  these  waters, 
and  to  learn  how  many  desperate  encounters, 
involving  the  destruction  of  whole  fleets  of  pirati- 
cal junks,  it  had  taken  to  bring  matters  even  to 
so  comparative  a  state  of  safety  as  the  present. 
Indeed,  in  Canton  itself  I  found  the  native  river 
passenger-boats  —  stern-wheelers,  worked  not  by 
steam  power,  but  by  the  leg  power  of  coolies  on 
a  treadmill  —  were  armed  to  the  teeth  with  cannon 
and  smaller  arms  in  the  way  of  cutlasses  and  guns. 
It  seemed  odd  to  think  of  such  a  state  of  things 
existing  on  the  interior  water-ways  of  a  vast  em- 
pire, until  I  began  to  ask  myself  how  long  ago 
it  was  since  Dick  Turpin  was  distinguishing  him- 
self in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  London  by 
overhauling  reverend  bishop  on  Ilounslow  Heath. 
Furthermore,  one  of  our  party  made  disagreeable 
allusions  to  holding  up  trains  and  looting  their 
passengers  on  some  of  our  own  American  railways. 
But  these  last  are  only  infrequent  interludes,  when 
the  cowboys  are  feeling  a  little  playful.  Here  they 
are  the  chronic  things. 


CANTON   RIVER  115 

Never  to  be  forgotten  is  the  scene  presented 
by  the  Canton  Kiver  population.  Here  in 
their  sampans  and  larger  boats  are  born,  live,  and 
die  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  people.  They  have 
no  dwelling-place  ashore.  A  diminutive  section 
of  the  stern  of  the  boat,  covered  with  a  matting, 
and  often  not  over  seven  feet  by  four,  is  parlor, 
kitchen,  bedroom,  birth-chamber,  death-chamber,  of 
the  whole  family.  With  her  baby  tied  on  her  back, 
the  mother  sweeps  the  heavy  scull,  while  the  older 
children  take  as  naturally  to  the  oar  as  ducks  to 
their  web-feet.  Indeed,  the  women,  as  a  general 
rule,  command  the  boat,  steer  it,  and  make  the 
bargains.  As  the  phrase  runs,  "  She  bosses  the 
boat,  and  her  husband  bosses  her."  But  boss  the 
boat  she  does,  and  a  delectable  sight  it  is  to  watch 
her  skill.  A  ripple  of  indication  that  there  is  a 
fare  of  any  kind,  and  fifty  samjxms  dash  for  the 
spot  like  a  flight  of  Florida  turkey-buzzards  sud- 
denly cognizant  of  a  dead  dog.  The  melee  that 
ensues  is  simply  indescribable.  Babies'  heads, 
on  the  backs  of  their  mothers,  rolls  round  like  a 
planetary  system  of  bowling-alley  balls,  the  centri- 
petal force,  however,  so  exactly  balancing  the  cen- 
trifugal as  to  prevent  their  flying  off  into  space. 
Sampans  clash,  thrust,  and  lever  one  another. 
The  smaller  children  sit,  or  are  jounced,  in  pa- 
tient, impassive.  Oriental  imperturbability,  while 
the  father  and  the  older  ones  poke  with  bamboo 
poles  or  fling  themselves  on  their  backs  and  skill- 
fully kick  at  critical  stages  of  the  maternal  tactics. 
Each  family   is   a   cooperative   unit,  for   success 


116  CHINA 

means  rice  or  no  rice.  Thus  for  miles  the  surface 
of  the  great  river  seems  one  successive  human  ant- 
heap,  wriggling,  with  bamboo  poles  for  antennse 
and  oars  for  nimble  legs. 

Arriving  as  we  did  in  Canton  at  the  break 
of  day,  we  had  the  best  of  chances  to  witness 
the  religious  devotions  of  the  countless  river  swarm, 
consisting  in  the  discharge  of  fire-crackers  from 
each  separate  boat,  to  scare  away  the  devils.  Never 
before  had  we  seen  on  so  impressive  a  scale  the 
practical  application  of  the  maxim,  "  Fight  the 
devil  with  fire ! "  and  the  spectacle  inevitably  led 
to  certain  profound  speculations  on  the  relation 
between  business  and  religion.  To  supply  the  need- 
ful missals  and  breviaries  for  the  morning  devotions 
of  such  millions,  the  manufacture  of  fire-crackers 
in  China  must  be  on  an  absolutely  colossal  scale. 
Imagination  refuses  to  grasp  the  numbers  of  powder 
and  paper  mills  thus  literally  "  rooted  and  grounded 
in  the  faith."  Should  foreign  missionaries  convert 
the  millions  of  their  customers  to  a  creed  prescrib- 
ing a  less  noisy  and  more  inward  form  of  morning 
worship,  total  financial  ruin  would  at  once  stare 
no  end  of  manufacturers  and  workmen  in  the  face. 
Forthwith  would  they  band  together  to  a  man 
to  destroy  in  blood  the  "  execrable  superstition." 
New  and  vivid  light  thus  broke  on  Saint  Paul's 
rough  experience  in  Ephesus  with  the  makers  of 
images  of  Diana,  till,  just  as  the  streets  of  that  city 
rang  with  the  cry,  "  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephe- 
sians ! "  so  one  seemed  to  hear  all  over  China  a 


THE    SHAMIEN  117 

mob  of  ferocious  voices  shouting,   "  Great  is  the 
Fire-cracker  as  a  Devil  Fighter  !  " 

To  see  a  familiar  Scripture  passage  —  worn  so 
threadbare  by  repetition  in  the  common  pulpit  — 
thus  suddenly  lighted  up  with  such  a  blaze  of  fire 
and  bang  of  emphasis,  acts  as  a  powerful  imag- 
inative stimulant  to  the  traditional  mind.  Besides, 
it  enlarges  charity.  If  as  sympathetic  a  tear  as 
Laurence  Sterne  could  shed  comes  stealing  down 
the  cheek  for  the  ruined  paper  and  powder  manu- 
facturers of  China,  why  should  it  be  thought  un- 
christian to  indulge  in  another  as  genuine  over 
Alexander  the  coppersmith,  and  his  poor  fellow- 
craftsmen  in  Ephesus  ?  Nay,  were  it  venturing 
on  a  yet  more  reprehensible  latitudinarianism  of 
stricture  to  aver  that  even  the  little  tots  of  the 
Chinese  children  on  the  samjoans  evinced  a  live- 
liness of  interest  in  the  morning  devotions,  not 
always  manifest  in  those  of  the  same  immature  age 
at  family  worship  at  home  ?  Yet,  we  are  forever 
insisting  on  the  supreme  importance  of  making 
religion  attractive  to  the  young. 

In  Canton,  we  were  to  be  the  guests  of  old 
and  dear  American  friends,  living  in  the 
large  and  beautiful  park,  the  Shamien,  the  conces- 
sion ceded  by  the  Chinese  government  for  the  resi- 
dence quarter  of  foreigners.  This  park,  a  mile  and 
a  quarter  in  circumference  and  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  the  river  and  by  wide  canals,  makes  a 
little  bit  of  heaven  in  contrast  with  the  crowding 
and  squalor  of  the  city  within  the  walls.     To  it  we 


118  CHINA 

were  rowed  down  through  the  hurly-burly  of  the 
river,  and  oh !  the  blessed  change  of  getting  ex- 
tricated from  the  mob  of  boats,  mounting  the  steps 
of  the  high  stone  wall,  and  finding  ourselves  greeted 
under  the  banyan-trees,  and  again  in  the  big,  wide- 
verandahed,  hospitable  house,  by  such  true-hearted 
friends.  Breakfast  announced,  how  eagerly  we  fall 
to  work  discussing  a  tender  beefsteak  and  still  ten- 
derer memories  of  loved  ones  at  home  !  Beautiful 
as  the  lotus  flowering  out  of  the  mud,  such,  and 
more  than  such,  the  sight,  out  of  the  mud  of  the 
relation  between  man  and  woman  in  China,  of  a 
loving  American  husband  and  wife,  and  a  bevy  of 
sweet  children  to  kiss. 

No  doubt  the  grace  of  charity  is  a  beautiful 
thing,  but  ever  with  the  proviso  that  a  line  is  some- 
where drawn  between  it  and  self-stultification.  It 
does  not,  then,  seem  to  me  invidious  to  say  that  the 
man  who  has  ever  had  a  mother,  sisters,  a  wife, 
daughters,  and  lived  with  them  in  the  richer,  deeper 
relations  habitual  among  ourselves,  who  does  not 
start  back  as  before  an  abyss  of  spiritual  bru- 
tality at  the  contemplation  of  what,  in  comparison, 
even  the  ideal  of  these  relations  stands  for  in  China, 
is  simply  to  be  ruled  out  of  court  as  incompetent 
to  express  any  comparative  social  judgment.  Not 
that  there  need  be  one  whit  of  praise  or  blame,  one 
ascription  of  personal  merit  or  demerit  in  such 
judgments,  more  than  in  comparing  a  rose  with  a 
cabbage.  None  the  less  there  breathes  an  atmos- 
phere of  sentiment  around  the  one  that  is  wanting  in 
the  other  ;  and  just  this  prosaic  lack  of  any  atmos- 


CANTON  119 

phere  of  sentiment  is  what  makes  China  the  cabbage 
of  the  nations. 

Breakfast  over,  we  found  that  ample  pro- 
vision had  been  made  by  our  host  for  our  ex- 
ploration of  Canton.  Four  chairs  on  long  bamboo 
poles,  with  three  coolies  apiece  to  bear  them  on  their 
shoulders,  stood  ready,  —  one  for  the  guide,  one 
for  our  host,  and  one  each  for  my  friend  and  my- 
self. Soon  we  were  mounted  aloft,  and  away 
trotted  our  coolies  out  through  the  leafy  Eden  of 
Shamien  into  the  Inferno  of  Canton.  On  entering 
the  walls  of  the  city  I  took  it  for  granted  that  the 
inscription  over  the  gateway  must  read,  "  All 
hope  abandon,  ye  who  enter  here !  " 

It  is  useless  to  try  to  describe  an  experience  of 
seven  hours  within  the  walls  of  Canton.  The  thing 
must  be  seen,  heard,  felt,  and  smelt.  I  desire  to  do 
absolute  justice  to  this  mighty  city  of  a  million  in- 
habitants, the  Paris  of  China,  as  it  has  been  called, 
and  so  freely  admit  at  the  outset  that  Shanghai 
seemed  to  me  to  bear  off  the  honors  in  the  variety 
and  differentiation  of  nauseous  smells  engendered. 
In  Canton  the  effect  produced  is,  if  I  may  use  the 
term,  more  composite,  —  a  blending  of  all  the  va- 
rieties in  one  heav}%  fetid  odor,  akin,  I  take  it,  in 
an  inverse  way,  to  what  is  aimed  at  by  French 
chemists  in  the  perfume  called  "  Mille  Fleurs." 
But  analysis  is  useless  in  such  cases.  I  can  only 
say  that  the  smell  of  Canton  is  more  massive,  more 
metropolitan. 

Even  in  our  sparsely  settled  country,  it  is  often 


120  CHINA 

said  that  there  are  too  many  people  in  the  world. 
All !  to  what  nightmare  dimensions  the  sense  of 
this  grows  in  Canton  !  The  streets  are  from  five  to 
eight  feet  wide,  the  houses  on  either  side  are  high, 
the  slit  of  sky  above  is  shut  out  by  mattings,  and 
the  throngs  pouring  along  are  ceaseless,  repulsive- 
looking,  offensive  to  the  touch.  Of  course,  we, 
lifted  on  high  on  the  shoulders  of  our  coolies,  es- 
caped the  push  and  elbowing,  and,  like  the  gods  on 
Olympus,  could  look  down  serenely  on  the  steaming, 
struggling  humanity  beneath  us.  Now  and  then 
we  would  meet  the  chair  of  some  other  Olympian 
mandarin  like  ourselves,  coming  the  other  way  ; 
and  then  the  question  of  squeezing  by  threatened 
to  become  international. 

Such,  in  outward  aspects,  was  for  hours  our  pas- 
sage through  the  enormous  city.  There  were  few 
open  squares,  no  park  oases  of  trees,  flowers,  and 
water,  no  fine  architectural  effects,  no  ample  and 
beautiful  temple  grounds.  The  largest  open  area 
embraced  the  dwelling  and  gardens  of  the  former 
Manchu  governor,  which  the  English,  on  taking 
Canton,  had  insisted  should  be  ceded,  in  token  of 
submission,  as  the  site  of  their  own  consulate.  Per- 
haps the  next  area  in  size  surrounded  the  Temple 
of  Horrors,  full  of  life-sized  figures  undergoing  the 
tortures  of  the  Buddhist  hell,  an  area  so  crowded 
with  hucksters,  fortune-tellers,  gamblers,  beggars, 
and  thieves  as  to  elicit  from  my  friend  the  remark 
that  the  "  hell  outside  was  as  striking  as  the  hell 
within."  But  we  had  made  up  our  minds  to  do 
Canton,  declining  no  invitation  to  go  anywhere  but 


CANTON  121 

to  the  execution  grounds  to  see  some  heads  chopped 
off.  To  the  vermin-ridden  prisons  we  did  go,  in 
which  among  other  wretched  beings  in  heavy  chains, 
we  saw  one  poor  woman  enduring  a  ten  years'  sen- 
tence. On  my  asking  a  high  civil  official  what  had 
been  her  offense,  he  answered  that  it  was  because 
her  son  had  committed  murder.  Whereat,  to  my 
further  query  as  to  why  she  was  thus  punished  for 
his  crime,  he  replied,  "  Because  she  did  not  give 
him  better  advice."  This  seemed  to  me  the  patri- 
archal system  of  China  with  a  vengeance.  I  may 
have  drawn  a  wrong  inference  from  the  words,  but 
do  not  think  I  did,  as  the  law-officer  spoke  admira- 
ble English,  and  seemed  to  think  the  reason  ought  to 
satisfy  any  rational  mind,  as  it  failed  to  mine,  for 
lack,  no  doubt,  of  a  due  sense  of  my  own  mother's 
responsibility  for  all  the  scurvy  things  I  have  done 
in  life. 

And  yet,  in  contrast  with  all  this  outward  ugli- 
ness, what  a  different  world  was  opened  upon  visit- 
ing one  after  another  a  series  of  the  little  manufac- 
tory shops.  Oh,  the  exquisite  silks  and  satins  that 
were  unrolled,  the  fairy-like  ivory  carvings  that 
were  brought  out,  the  delicate  filigree  work  in  gold 
and  silver,  the  beautiful  embroideries  we  saw  grow- 
ing under  deft  fingers  before  our  eyes  !  The  bronzes, 
the  porcelains,  so  marvelously  finished,  so  harmo- 
nious in  tints  and  dyes !  And  to  reflect  that  all 
this  had  been  going  on  centuries  ago  as  to-day,  go- 
ing on  when  we  as  peoples  were  sunk  in  barbarism  ! 
What  a  beehive  of  industry  the  mighty  city !  What 
legions   of   patient,   cunning,   tasteful    craftsmen, 


122  CHINA 

working  their  twelve  and  fifteen  hours  a  day ! 
What  temperamental  phlegm  of  calm  in  every  fibre 
of  body  and  mind,  along  with  such  quiet  cheerful- 
ness ! 

True,  there  is  no  indication  of  any  high  spirit- 
ual ideals  of  the  beautifid  or  of  the  sublime  in 
the  models  they  so  deftly  imitate.  Again,  as  in 
Japan,  comes  the  thought  "  Great  in  little  things, 
little  in  great."  While  in  Greece  and  in  Grecized 
Italy,  hosts  of  just  as  clever  workmen  reproduced 
in  endless  number  the  statues  of  Phidias  and 
Praxiteles,  the  paintings  of  Apelles,  till  the  poorest 
households  possessed  them  in  niches  and  on  their 
painted  walls,  here  nothing  is  reproduced  but  nests 
of  carved  ivory  balls  delicate  as  gossamer,  grace- 
ful designs  in  lacquer,  grotesque  dragon  shapes 
in  bronze,  wavy  sheens  in  silk.  The  contrast  is  not 
raised  for  censure,  but  for  clearness  of  impression. 
China  never  evolved  anything  in  the  shajje  of  an 
artist  sublimely  inspired  in  thought  or  imagination. 
Prosaic  in  the  presence  of  this  higher  world,  what 
poetry  she  has  works  itself  off  in  pretty  and  gro- 
tesque fancies.  The  great  models  of  a  nation,  not 
its  skillful  imitators,  is  it  that  determine  its  stand- 
ing in  the  realms  of  art,  literature,  philosophy,  and 
relierion. 


No  sight  in  all  Canton  is  so  full  of  interest 

and  so  explains  the  genius,  or  rather  lack  of 

original  genius,  of  this  mighty  nation,  as  what,  for 

want  of  a  better  expression,  might  be   called  the 

Examination  Halls  of  the  countless  candidates  for 


CANTON   EXAMINATION   HALLS        123 

positions  in  tlie  civil  service,  the  one  opening  to  a 
career  in  China,  from  the  grade  of  the  most  ordi- 
nary functionary  to  that  of  prime  minister.  China 
has  no  hereditary  nobility.  The  highest  place  is 
free  to  the  lowest  man,  and  all  through  education. 
An  ideal  programme  truly  !  —  if  carried  out  in  the 
spirit  as  well  as  in  the  flesh. 

To  call  up  before  the  untraveled  American  a 
vivid  picture  of  the  Examination  Halls  of  Can- 
ton, the  most  practical  thing  woidd  be  to  refer 
him  point  blank  to  the  cattle-yards  of  Chicago, 
covering  with  their  acres  on  acres  of  pens  such  vast 
areas  of  space.  Then,  should  he  mentally  subtract 
from  each  several  pen  its  ox,  and  substitute  for  him 
a  Chinaman  with  ink  and  hair-pencil  and  paper,  he 
will  realize  the  whole  scene  as  distinctly  as  if  he 
were  on  the  spot  in  China.  In  Canton,  there  are 
12,000  of  these  pens,  one  for  each  of  the  12,000  can- 
didates. In  this  he  is  shut  up  by  himself  for  three 
days  and  three  nights,  then  let  out  for  three,  then 
returned  for  three  more,  at  the  end  of  which  time 
he  is  supposed  to  have  written  out  all  the  answers 
to  the  examination  papers.  Not  infrequently  a 
candidate  is  found  to  have  died  in  his  pen  of 
anxiety  and  exhaustion ;  but  there  are  plenty  to 
take  his  place.  Indeed,  fairly  appalling  is  the 
stress  of  competition.  Sometimes,  out  of  the 
12,000,  not  over  one  or  two  hundred  pass  the  or- 
deal which  enrolls  them  among  the  literati,  and  ren- 
ders them  eligible  to  place  in  the  public  service. 
Still,  the  contest  is  renewed,  till  it  is  no  very  un- 
common thing  to  find  men  of  over  eighty,  and  at 


124  CHINA 

times  of  over  ninety,  once  again  volunteering  in 
the  forlorn  hope.  The  mind  is  awed  at  an  illus- 
tration of  the  struggle  for  life  on  a  scale  as  stupen- 
dous in  the  world  of  letters  as  that  of  the  codfish 
and  herring  for  survival  in  the  sea. 

What,  however,  is  the  nature  of  this  terrible 
ordeal  through  which  the  successful  candidate 
must  pass?  In  what  classes  of  studies  is  he  ex- 
amined, and  with  what  probable  results  on  intel- 
lect, character,  imagination,  and  ideal  of  life  ?  The 
Chinese  classics,  the  work  of  national  sages  who 
lived  thousands  of  years  ago  — these,  with  the  enor- 
mous commentaries  on  them,  are  the  fountain- 
heads  of  knowledge  from  which  the  candidate  is 
supposed  to  derive  all  his  light.  Great  men  were 
these  sages,  who  digested  many  a  pregnant  thought, 
but  who  along  with  this  elaborated  a  system  of 
ceremonialism  in  manners  so  vast  and  intricate,  a 
labyrinth  of  artificial  formalism  so  confusing,  that 
it  is  the  study  of  a  lifetime  to  know  just  what  to 
do  and  what  not  to  do  on  each  public  or  private 
occasion,  while  yet  it  is  civil  and  moral  death  to 
fail  to  know  it.  Fifty  French  dancing-masters 
condensed  into  one  would  remain  a  composite  un- 
tutored barbarian  in  etiquette,  in  comparison  with 
what  is  demanded  of  an  average  Chinese  candidate. 
Memory  is,  then,  the  one  intellectual  faculty  that 
counts  most.  The  slightest  departure  from  pre- 
scription, worse  than  a  crime,  is  a  ceremonial 
blunder,  and  a  ceremonial  blunder  outweighs  in 
deep-dyed  guilt  a  whole  catalogue  of  crimes. 

Here,  then,  is  a  principle  of   natural  selection 


CANTON   EXAMINATION,   HALLS        125 

that  weeds  out  from  the  start  all  variations  from 
the  permanent  specific  type.  Variations  are  the 
black  sheep  of  the  flock,  to  be  killed  off  outright, 
lest  they  should  affect  the  uniform  color  of  the  in- 
tellectual wool.  Should,  by  any  freak  of  nature,  a 
single  pen  be  found  infected  by  the  presence  of  a 
sporadic  youthful  Harvey  haunted  with  a  new  idea 
of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  by  a  sporadic  youth- 
ful Jenner  mentally  poisoned  with  the  virus  of 
vaccination,  his  career  would  end  on  the  spot.  As 
for  a  youthful  Goethe,  venturing  in  his  examina- 
tion paper  on  the  wild  suggestion  that  the  human 
skull  might  be  shown  to  consist  of  modified  verte- 
brae, measures  so  stringent  would  at  once  be  taken 
with  his  own  vertebrae,  that,  in  his  case  at  least, 
no  further  demonstration  of  the  truth  or  falsity  of 
the  theory  would  be  available.  No !  every  trace 
of  innovation,  every  hint  of  a  new  idea,  is  the 
worse  than  worthless  girl  baby  to  be  incontinently 
drowned.  Thus  is  the  Chinese  man's  head  sub- 
jected to  the  same  kind  of  aborting  clamp  as  the 
Chinese  woman's  foot,  with  the  like  result  of  a 
life-long  intellectual  toddle. 

Discouraging,  then,  to  anything  akin  to  origi- 
nality of  mind  as  this  stupendous  system  must  be 
admitted  to  be,  bread  and  butter,  career,  wealth, 
dignities,  all  turn  absolutely  on  never  deviating 
into  originality.  The  very  name  of  originality  is 
but  the  synonym  not  for  mere  lack  of  veneration, 
but  for  positive  delirious  desire  to  trample  on  the 
sacred  images  of  Confucius  and  Meneius.  None 
the  less  for  the  attainment  of  the  great  pi^actical 


126  CHINA 

object  it  has  in  view,  namely  the  grand  anti-Dar- 
winian demonstration  of  the  permanence  of  species, 
at  least  in  China,  this  vast  educational  system  be- 
longs among  the  most  impressive  spectacles  in  hu- 
man history  ;  achieving  its  end  more  perfectly  and 
on  a  vaster  scale  than  have  any  of  the  most  potent 
educational  systems  —  the  Spartan,  the  Venetian, 
even  that  of  the  Catholic  Church  with  its  priest- 
hood —  the  world  has  ever  seen.  While  it  weeds 
out  originality,  —  the  one  bane  of  the  immutable 
conservatism  it  would  maintain,  —  it  none  the  less 
unerringly  selects  the  class  of  minds  most  effective 
for  the  end  it  has  in  view :  men  of  strong  health 
capable  of  enduring  the  severest  strain ;  men  of 
powerful  memory  of  endless  details ;  men  of  horse 
logic  never  troubled  about  premises  ;  men  in  whom 
automatic  repetition  of  the  most  intricate  system 
of  ceremonialism  has  replaced  every  impulse  to 
spontaneity  ;  men,  in  fine,  who  can  decorously  in- 
troduce more  in  the  way  of  unimpeachable  moral 
maxims  into  the  preamble  of  the  worst  government 
"  squeeze  "  than  elsewhere  can  be  paralleled.  Thus 
has  been  fashioned  the  chilled  steel  die  with  the 
irresistible  weight  of  pressure  to  force  it  home, 
through  which  one  authorized  image  and  super- 
scription has  been  stamped  on  the  mental  coin  of 
the  empire. 

Plato's  dream,  in  his  Republic,  of  a  gov- 
ernment administered  solely  by  philosophers 
has  in  China  been  brought  down  from  the  sky  of 
fanciful  sj)eculation  into  the  solid  world  of  beef  and 


A    GOVERNMENT    OF   PHILOSOPHERS     127 

pudding.  Concrete  in  every  atom,  as  soon  would 
the  Chinaman  think  o£  separating  a  boulder  from 
the  force  of  gravitation  inherent  in  it,  as  theory 
from  practical  e very-day  embodiment.  No  need, 
therefore,  for  him  to  go  with  Plato  to  Syracuse  to 
hunt  up  an  amiable,  progressive  tyrant  to  serve  for 
a  2^011  sto  from  which  to  work  his  philosophic 
lever.  He  takes  his  stand  just  where  he  is,  and 
begins  to  pry  away. 

Now  this  ideal  of  a  government  by  philosophers, 
or  saints,  or  the  two  combined,  is  one  that  through- 
out human  history  has  exerted  a  s^jell  of  fascination 
over  the  higher  order  of  minds.  To  them  it  has 
stood  for  the  legitimate  reign  of  reason  over  chaos, 
of  virtue  over  vice,  —  the  only  reign  worthy  the 
allegiance  of  a  noble  nature.  Stupendous  the  scale 
on  which  the  Brahmins  strove  to  carry  out  this 
ideal  in  India ;  the  Egyptian  priesthood,  in  the 
valley  of  the  Nile ;  the  mediaeval  Catholic  Church, 
in  Europe ;  although  in  each  of  these  great  instances 
philosophy  was  inseparably  bound  up  with  theology. 
Here,  in  China,  on  the  contrary,  the  colossal  experi- 
ment has  been  on  a  purely  mundane  foundation. 
"  Respect  the  gods,  but  keep  them  at  a  distance !  " 
Heaven  is  their  realm,  China  ours.  Let  them  hoe 
their  row,  while  we  hoe  our  own ! 

Sooner  or  later,  every  great  race  gets  a  lawgiver 
or  prophet  made  in  its  own  image,  while  reacting 
in  turn  on  the  race  itself  through  the  mass  and 
momentum  of  his  own  greater  j)ersonality.  Mo- 
hammed was,  tooth  and  nail,  the  fiercest  Bedouin 
in  all  Arabia,  though  a  highly  sublimated  Bedouin. 


128  CHINA 

Gautama  Buddha  was  the  most  absolute  type  of 
pessimist  in  all  India,  though  cariying  the  habitual 
cheerfulness  that  is  so  unfailing  a  characteristic  of 
pessimists  to  greater  lengths  than  is  possible  with 
men  in  whom  traces  of  oijtimism  still  survive. 
Look  novv  at  Confucius,  the  colossal  man  in  whom 
first  embodied  itself  the  vast  Mongolian  race,  only 
to  be  reacted  on  by  the  weight  of  his  enormous 
return  pressure  !  China,  always  traditional,  made 
him,  and  then  he  re-made  China.  Impossible  is  it 
to  speak  of  the  man  but  in  terms  of  wonder,  rever- 
ence, and  love ;  as  equally  impossible  is  it  to 
escape  a  half  humorous  smile  at  the  prosaic,  mat- 
ter-of-fact, dead-level  respectability  of  certain  sides 
of  his  intelligence  and  character,  —  the  measure, 
no  doubt,  of  traditional  Mongolian  alloy  requisite 
to  fit  his  fine  gold  for  a  circulating  medium  tough 
enough  to  withstand  the  wear  and  tear  of  China. 

Confucius  said  of  himself  —  too  much  reverence 
for  the  wisdom  of  his  ancestors  had  he  not  to  say 
it! — that  he  was  "  not  an  originator  but  only  a 
transmitter."  Of  the  sin  of  originality  —  literally 
tlie  "  original  sin  "  of  China  —  he  sought  to  shake 
his  skirts  clear  from  the  start.  Yao  and  Shun,  cer- 
tain impossible  paragons  of  perfection  in  the  way 
of  mythical  Chinese  kings  of  the  past,  were  held 
responsible  for  all  his  ideas,  —  kings  apart  from 
whose  august  sanction  he  would  never  have  ventured 
on  the  impiety  of  entertaining  ideas  at  all.  Very 
much  with  the  same  solemnity  of  conviction  might 
Newton  have  averred,  of  his  own  relation  to  the 
law  of  gravitation,  that  he  was  simply  a  transmit- 


A    GOVERNMENT    OF   PHILOSOPHERS     129 

ter  of  the  long-established  goings-on  of  the  ancestral 
planetary  system,  indeed,  had  never  gone  a  hair's 
breadth  beyond  a  literal  statement  of  what  had 
been  its  venerated  custom  from  the  beginning. 
Well,  if  Confucius  was  not  an  original  mind,  an 
original  character,  an  original  forecaster  of  human 
destiny,  then  the  doctrine  of  evolution  should  be 
allowed  its  own  sweet  will  in  resolving  back  all 
hmnan  personalities  into  the  aboriginal  pregnancy 
of  the  nebular  mist  ! 

The  grand,  wise,  humane  man,  so  benevolent  and 
compassionate,  so  sagacious,  so  sweet  and  humor- 
ous, so  consecrated  to  his  mission,  so  devout,  too, 
in  his  deep,  though  unimpassioned  way!  IMore- 
over,  such  a  sincere  believer  in  Yao  and  Shun,  and 
in  the  doctrine  that  manners  make  the  man  and 
that  the  two  are  one  and  inseparable  ;  in  fine,  in 
the  immutable  truth  that  there  are  at  least  three 
thousand  external  postures  which,  being  reveren- 
tially assumed,  become  so  many  channels  for  the 
inflow  into  the  soul  of  corresponding  interior  graces 
of  genuine  courtesy  I  So  exceptionally  rich,  too,  in 
the  man  was  his  native  soil  of  goodness  that  no 
doubt  he  could  live  up  to  every  one  of  the  three 
thousand  external  postures  and  inform  them  all 
with  the  spirit,  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  dry 
rot  of  formalism  and  insincerity  they  have  set  on 
in  the  hearts  of  his  countrj-men. 

Such  a  literal  and  matter-of-fact  believer  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth  as  Confucius,  the 
woi'ld  never  saw.  Heaven  meant  to  him  an  om- 
nipotent, ever-embodied,  tangible  presence  in  the 


130  CHINA 

world  now  and  here  of  a  grand,  orderly,  beneficent 
law  that  need  only  be  recognized  and  obeyed,  and 
lo !  its  kingdom,  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  was  on 
hand.  Here  was  the  sublime  side  of  the  great 
sage.  Profound  was  his  insight  into  the  laws  of 
nature  which  alone  can  establish  the  well-founded 
state  and  family,  and  for  all  this  China  owes  him  an 
immeasurable  debt.  But  now  comes  in  the  racial 
and  personal  limitation  of  the  man,  namely,  his 
overpowering  faith  in  the  method  of  working  from 
outside  to  inside.  People  at  large,  to  use  his  own 
favorite  expression,  are  like  so  much  water,  which 
always  assumes  the  exact  shape  of  whatever  dish  it 
is  poured  into.  If  only,  then,  he  could  fabricate 
the  right  kind  of  morally-shaped  dish  out  of  a  few 
rules,  all  the  rest  desired  would  follow  of  itself. 
In  all  this,  in  his  own  lofty  way,  he  believed  as 
profoundly  as  the  most  commonplace  pie-maker  in 
his  own  power  to  make  all  his  pies  come  out  alike, 
if  only  he  can  subject  their  common  dough  to  one 
and  the  same  fluted  tin-cutter. 

Unhappily,  on  just  this  fatal  inheritance  from  its 
mighty  sage  is  founded  the  vast  Chinese  system  of 
education  for  a  government  by  philosophers.  Of 
course  it  requires  an  immense  supply  of  philoso- 
phers to  fill  all  the  offices  of  so  immense  an  emj)ire, 
while  alas  !  by  definition,  a  philosopher  is  a  man 
who  thinks,  and  yet  most  men  do  not  think  except 
in  a  sadly  lopsided  way.  Not  for  a'  moment,  how- 
ever, does  the  practical  Chinese  mind  suffer  itself  to 
be  balked  by  any  such  purely  theoretical  difficulty. 
First-hand  thinking  enough,  it  says  in  substance, 


A   GOVERNMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHERS     131 

has  already  been  done,  and  done  supremely  well. 
The  moral-sage  dish  has  been  shaped  to  absolute 
perfection.  Now  squeeze  into  the  mould,  like  so 
much  clay,  all  candidates  aspiring  for  place,  and 
they  will  be  turned  out  so  many  regulation-sized 
philosophic  bricks,  each  one  of  them  an  exact  copy 
of  Confucius,  repeating  the  same  thoughts,  never 
deviating  from  the  same  methods,  and  all  able  to 
imitate  to  a  hair  the  same  endless  posturings.  Thus, 
the  most  careless  mind  can  hardly  fail  to  be  struck 
with  certain  salient  points  of  difference  between  this 
brick-yard  system  pursued  at  Canton  and  the  freer 
system  adopted,  say,  at  Harvard.  Truly,  a  serious 
comparison  of  the  Canton  examination  papers  with 
those  in  use  at  any  American  or  European  college 
furnishes  one  of  the  most  comically  interesting  and 
instructive  historical  studies  that  can  be  indulged 
in ;  and,  if  entered  on  soberly  and  discreetly,  —  a 
state  of  mind  not  so  easy  to  maintain,  —  will  throw  a 
flood  of  light  on  China  not  to  be  gained  from  read- 
ing a  dozen  portly  volumes.  Let  me  modestly  com- 
mend it  to  teachers  of  history  in  Harvard,  Yale, 
or  Columbia.  Specimens  of  Chinese  examination 
j)apers  are  easy  to  get  at ;  for  examjile,  "  The  China 
Review,"  vol.  viii.  No.  6. 

That  such  a  system,  carried  out  on  so  stupendous 
a  scale,  should  prove  a  potent  cause  of  national  ar- 
rest of  development  is  of  course  inevitable.  Not 
that  among  the  literati  of  China  there  have  not  been 
in  every  generation  acute  thinkers,  and  men  of  pro- 
found feeling  and  lofty  character.  No  system  can 
utterly  destroy  in  powerful  natures  the  germs  of 


132  CHINA 

intellectual  curiosity  and  native  love  of  virtue, 
that,  spite  of  every  obstacle,  will  assert  themselves. 
European  scholars  long  resident  in  the  country 
assert  that  from  time  to  time  books  appear  — 
secretly  circulated  indeed  and  hard  to  get  hold  of 
—  that  are  characterized  by  strong,  independent 
thinking.  Indeed,  such  scholars  further  insist  that, 
just  as  when  great,  overshadowing  forests  are  cut 
down,  an  immediate  regrowth  of  trees  of  a  different 
species  sets  in,  trees  already  on  hand  as  plantlets 
and  only  awaiting  a  chance  at  sun  and  air,  so  wonld 
it  prove  in  China  with  the  upspringing  of  a  new 
and  vigorous  mental  growth,  could  only  the  present 
great  Mandarin  forest  have  the  axe  laid  at  its  roots. 
Meanwhile,  however,  this  forest  continues  to  spread 
the  deadly  mildew  of  its  shade  over  every  tiny 
nursling,  and  thus  does  the  mind  and  lieart  of  the 
average  educated  Chinaman  become  mere  punk  and 
powder,  while  outwardly  he  flourishes  like  the  green 
bay  tree,  through  the  simple  activity  of  his  external 
bark. 

Such,  then,  is  the  sj^stem  of  education  that  sets 
its  stamp  on  the  politico-literary  officials  of  China, 
the  men  who  impart  the  tone  to  the  ideas  and  pol- 
icy of  the  empire.  Thence  spreads  to  the  people 
at  large  insincerity  and  deep-rooted  distrust  be- 
tween man  and  man.  From  top  to  bottom,  as  is 
admitted  on  all  hands,  government  is  honeycombed 
with  corruption.  The  one  honest  service  in  the 
empire  is  the  collection  of  customs,  and  that  is  ad- 
ministered by  Europeans  and  Americans,  because 
there  China  cannot  help  herself.     With  no  concern 


A    GOVERNMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHERS     133 

with  government,  the  people  scarcely  know  the 
meaning  of  patriotism  ;  indeed,  when  the  English 
and  French  were  besieging  Pekin,  cities  all  round 
made  private  terms  for  themselves,  supplying  in 
return  provisions,  bullock-carts,  and  coolies, — the 
same  thing  as  if,  were  Boston  besieged,  Salem, 
Lynn,  and  Worcester  should  agree  to  furnish  all 
the  beef,  hay,  and  horses  the  enemy  needed,  so  only 
that  they  themselves  were  let  alone.  Thus  so  hol- 
low a  shell  as  the  Chinese  Empire  nowhere  else 
exists  ;  while  none  the  less  bodily  and  in  latent  men- 
tal capacity  the  Chinese  are  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful races  on  the  globe,  —  far  the  superiors  of  the 
Japanese  in  solidity  of  mind,  in  business  capacity, 
in  potential  depth  of  thought  and  persistence  of 
will,  in  almost  everything  but  artistic  sensibility. ^ 

1  And  yet  a  conflict  between  China  and  Japan  has  turned  out 
like  a  fight  between  an  ox  and  a  hornet,  in  wliieh  the  hornet,  able 
to  get  in  everywhere  and  the  ox  nowhere,  the  big,  helpless  bovine 
runs  bellowing  across  the  plain.  So  much  will  stereotyped  rou- 
tine and  too  protractedjpddiction  to  Yao  and  Shun  do  with  a 
mighty  people. 


THE  TROPICS 

From  Hong  Kong,  on  a  radiant  December 
morning,  we  set  sail  on  the  German  steam- 
ship Oldenburg  for  Singapore ;  and  as  the  bracing 
winter  weather  had  depressed  the  mercury  as  near 
the  freezing  point  as  80°  Fahrenheit,  we  got  away 
in  a  fine  exhilaration  of  spirits  for  the  veritable 
Tropics.  That  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II.  had  close  at 
heart  keeping  warm  tender  memories  of  the  Vater- 
land  in  the  breasts  of  his  subjects,  even  in  the 
farthest  East,  was  made  clear,  not  alone  by  the 
lively  fluttering  of  the  national  flag  aloft,  but  by 
the  stirring  strains  of  the  Wacht  am  Rhein  from  a 
German  brass  band,  and,  deeper  yet,  by  the  broach- 
ing on  deck  of  a  keg  of  ice-cold  Bavarian  beer ; 
this  last  a  bit  of  symbolism  as  enthusiastically 
repeated  each  morning  and  afternoon  of  the  voy- 
age as  the  sunrise  and  sunset  salute  of  the  colors 
enjoined  on  the  army  at  every  military  post. 

Not,  however,  that  due  courtesies  were  not 
equally  shown  to  the  deepest  national  sensibilities 
of  China.  From  our  bows  hung  suspended  an  im- 
mense festoon  of  at  least  two  hundred  and  fifty 
packs  of  fire-crackers ;  and  if  ever  the  devils  were 
duly  warned  off  from  any  ship,  they  were  from 
ours  when  these  started  their  spitfire  fusillade.  As 
large  numbers  of  Chinese  emigrants  were  steerage 


136  THE   TROPICS 

passengers,  it  was  comforting  to  a  humane  mind 
to  feel  tliat  they  no  doubt  were  experiencing  a 
quietude  of  peace  commensurate  with  the  scale  of 
the  noisy  thaumaturgic  manifesto.  Thus  West  and 
East  met  and  kissed  one  another,  as  Teuton  and 
Chinaman  were  made  happy,  each  in  his  chosen  way. 

Far  back  in  early  boyhood  days,  when 
assiduously  neglecting  his  studies  at  school, 
one  none  the  less  may  have  received  some  single 
im2)ression  which  all  through  life  has  remained 
indelible.  It  was  wrought,  perhaps,  on  the  imagi- 
nation by  a  little  view  in  his  "  Pictorial  Geogra- 
phy "  of  the  island  peak  of  Teneriffe,  — a  view  in 
which  a  jjerpendicular,  snow-crowned  mountain 
pierced  sheer  through  the  clouds  into  the  upper 
sky,  while  at  its  base  lay  a  j-avishing  dream  of 
naked  Negro  boys,  cocoanut-palms,  sugar-cane,  and 
heavily-laden  banana-trees,  all  basking  in  a  lan- 
guishing atmosphere  of  peace,  in  which  it  seemed 
impossible  that  school  should  ever  keep.  Many 
the  cent,  no  doubt,  he  had  invested  in  bits  of  cocoa- 
nut,  and  even  in  cocoanut-cakes.  But  here  was  a 
land  in  which  an  ingenuous  boy  needed  only  duly 
to  aggravate  a  monkey  to  procure  gratis  in  return 
a  volley  of  the  blessed  nuts,  and  then  retire  to  the 
gratefid  shade,  punch  holes  in  the  welcome  mis- 
siles, and  drink  their  delicious  milk.  Cows,  as 
lacteal  fonts,  seemed  prosaic  in  comparison.  From 
that  date  followed  a  veritable  passion  for  the 
tropics  that  haunted  him  through  life.  Such,  at 
any  rate,  was  my  own  child  experience. 


SINGAPORE  137 

In  Singapore  I  felt  sure  of  the  genuine  thing, 
—  no  miserable  compromise,  like  Florida,  between 
winter  and  summer,  frost  and  fever,  where  a  tiger 
would  be  subject  to  pulmonary  complaints  or  a 
python  too  sluggish  from  cold  to  embrace  with  due 
fervor  a  deer.  The  region  I  craved  must  lie  close 
to  the  equator  and  under  the  vertical  sun.  Its 
inhabitants  must  be  innocent  of  clothing,  lest  the 
beauty  of  their  bronze  or  jet-black  bodies  should 
be  impaired.  Flaming  red  turbans  and  red  loin- 
cloths they  might  wear,  to  be  in  keeping  with  the 
equally  flaming  flowers  of  the  jungle,  but  beyond 
this,  nothing.  The  huts  must  be  thatched  with 
palm-leaves,  the  bread  must  grow  on  trees,  the 
coffee-berries  must  thrust  themselves  in  through 
the  windows  and  ask  to  be  plucked,  roasted,  and 
decocted ;  cinnamon,  nutmeg,  and  cloves  must  drop 
spontaneously  into  the  bread-fruit  pudding,  duly 
to  flavor  it ;  while  mangoes,  mangosteens,  and  pine- 
apples should  voice  their  bewildering  rival  claims 
to  furnish  the  luscious  dessert. 

Such  was  the  blissful  dream,  as  day  after 
III.  . 

day  we  floated  over  summer  seas,  without 

the  change  of   a    degree    in    the  direction    or   an 

increase  for  an  hour  in  the  gentle  pressure  abeam 

of  the  northeast  monsoon.     It  was   the  poetry  of 

sailing,  in  which  it  seemed  that  captain,  crew,  ship, 

and  engines  might  all  be  lapsed  in  a  long  sweet 

siesta  and  no  harm  could  come  on   such  charmed 

waves.       How    tender    and    considerate,  too,   the 

geological   providence   that,  in   thrusting   out  the 


138  THE   TROPICS 

Malay  Peninsula  a  thousand  miles,  till  it  nearly 
touched  the  equator,  had  made  such  kindly  provi- 
sion that  no  planetary  pilgrim  should  be  able  to 
girdle  the  earth  without  this  tropical  experience  ! 

Singapore,  a  possession  of  Great  Britain, — 
what  does  she  not  possess  I  —  lies  at  the  extreme 
southern  point  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  and  is 
only  two  degrees  from  the  equator.  I  begrudged 
the  two  degrees  ;  but  one  cannot  have  everything 
in  a  world  so  imperfectly  constituted.  The  actual 
settlement  is  on  a  little  island,  not,  however,  so 
far  from  the  mainland  that  a  tiger  cannot  swim 
over  from  the  domain  of  the  Sultan  of  Johore,  to 
pick  up  an  appetizing  native  whenever  so  disposed. 
Visited  with  constant  showers,  it  combines  in  its 
blazing  sunshine  and  abundant  moisture  the  condi- 
tions of  the  most  exuberant  tropical  luxuriance. 
A  richer  variety  of  nationalities,  moreover,  could 
hardly  be  coveted  by  the  most  exacting  ethnologist. 
To  specify  a  few,  there  are  Achinese,  Africans, 
Arabs,  Armenians,  Bengalis,  Burmese,  Chinese, 
Dyaks,  Javanese,  Malays,  Manillamen,  Parsees, 
Persians,  Siamese,  Tamils.  Singapore,  in  fine,  is 
the  great  central  meeting-place  for  the  trade  of 
China,  Japan,  Java,  the  Malayan  Archipelago, 
India,  Arabia,  Abyssinia,  and  Europe,  and  is  full 
of  residents  from  each. 

It  was  just  after  sunset  that  our  steamship  glided 
into  the  harbor,  and  so  late  before  we  were  finally 
tied  up  to  the  pier  that  we  hardly  cared  to  venture 
ashore  for  the  night.  Indeed,  two  young  men, 
who    started   out    in   search  of    a  hotel,   returned 


SINGAPORE  139 

by  midnight  in  a  sadly  demoralized  nervous  con- 
dition. They  had  secured  a  sleeping-room,  but 
found  that  its  tenancy  was  of  the  nature  of  the 
Box  and  Cox  arrangement,  in  the  familiar  farce. 
Box  was  in  occupancy.  He  was  a  huge  serpent. 
In  vain  the  landlord  offered  another  room.  They 
precipitately  retired  to  the  ship.  None  the  less, 
their  report  looked  so  promising  in  the  tropical 
way  that  the  rest  of  us  waited  impatiently  for  the 
dawn. 

How  beautiful  the  dawn,  and  what  a  story  was 
told  to  the  finite  little  tourist  as  to  his  real  posi- 
tion on  the  planet  by  the  great  sidereal  clock  of 
the  heavens !  Close  down  to  the  horizon  in  the 
north  hung  the  pole  star ;  while  at  fifteen  degrees 
of  elevation  in  the  south  stood  the  constellation  of 
the  Southern  Cross.  Gradually,  absorbed  in  the 
excess  of  light  of  the  rising  sun,  they  vanished 
from  sight. 

With  sunrise  began  the  bustle  of  day ;  and, 
as  I  looked  out  on  the  side  toward  the  town, 
the  first  grateful  sight  was  a  rude  cart  drawn  by 
a  veritable  pair  of  the  cream-colored,  humped- 
back,  reversed-horn  cattle,  so  familiar  to  all  fre- 
quenters of  Barnum's  Circus.  They  were  driven 
by  an  almost  coal-black  Tamil,  in  a  bright  red 
turban  and  red  loin-cloth,  —  a  piece  of  such  fine 
naked  realism  that  the  great  moral  showman 
would  have  had  essentially  to  modify  it  before  pre- 
senting it  to  the  decorous  American  public.  None 
the  less,  over  the  cattle  I  could  not  help  exclaim- 


140  THE   TROPICS 

ing  :  "  They  look  as  natural  as  though  under  their 
native  tent  on  the  Back  Bay,  Boston  ! "  On  the 
other  side  of  the  ship,  however,  was  soon  revealed 
a  spectacle  such  as  Barnuni  in  his  most  inspired 
hour  would  never  have  ventured  on.  Immense 
barges,  filled  with  sacks  of  coal,  each  swarming 
with  fifty  or  more  naked  fellows,  equal  in  anat- 
omy to  any  of  the  gladiatorial  saints  in  Michel 
Angelo's  Last  Judgment,  and  who  would  have 
driven  the  austere  and  self-contained  master  wild 
with  enthusiasm,  had  come  out  to  coal  our  ship. 
Ex  tempore  scaffoldings  were  erected,  on  the 
various  stages  of  which  the  men  stood  in  ranges, 
heaving  from  one  to  another  the  heavy  sacks.  No 
conceivable  attitude  of  grace,  strength,  and  agility 
but  was  struck ;  and  such  pure,  unmitigated  enjoy- 
ment of  superb  legs,  and  loins,  and  backs,  and 
sinewy  shoulders,  I  never  reveled  in  before.  Ah ! 
why  do  not  our  artists  come  oat  to  the  tropics  to 
j)ursue  their  studies  ?  We  talk  of  our  life-schools 
in  New  York  and  Boston,  where  a  few  fatty,  aca- 
demically posing,  half -asleep  models  are  set  up  to  be 
drawn  from  at  so  much  an  hour.  Life-schools ! 
Schools  of  death,  in  comjaarisou  with  what  is  here 
before  the  eyes!  These  fellows,  lifting,  tossing, 
catching,  re-tossing  the  two-bushel  sacks  of  coal, 
have  never  heard  of  the  Greek  Laocoon,  or  the 
Discus-thrower,  or  the  Athlete  with  the  Scraper. 
But  they  are  spontaneously  enacting  them  at  every 
turn,  as  free  and  unconscious  in  doing  it  as 
the  runners  and  wrestlers  Phidias  looked  on  and 
sketched  at  the  Olympian  games. 


SINGAPORE  141 

The  first  thing  on  leaving  the  pier  was  to 
hire  a  ghai'vy,  —  a  small  carriage  drawn  by 
a  wiry  little  pony,  capable  of  eight  miles  an  hour 
under  a  heat  of  ninety-five  degrees.  The  cjliarry 
has  a  thick  roof,  and  is  open  on  all  sides,  with 
slat-screens  to  draw  for  protection  against  the  sun. 
As  for  the  driver,  he  is  simple  pei-fection  in  the 
way  of  the  picturesque,  whatever  he  may  be  in  mor- 
als. Malay  by  race,  with  a  large  piece  of  highly 
variegated  silk  wound  round  his  waist,  and  falling 
in  folds  as  a  petticoat,  with  a  scrupulously  white 
tunic  over  his  shoulders,  and  a  red  turban  of  stu- 
pendous dimensions  on  his  head,  he  looks  an 
Oriental  sovereign  cabman,  with  whom  one  feels 
at  first  as  chary  of  bargaining  as  with  the  Grand 
Sultan.  So  figurative  is  he,  however,  in  the  style 
of  his  first  financial  proposition  that  one  soon  sees 
it  would  be  utterly  prosaic  and  Occidental  to  take 
him  literally.  A  reduction  to  one  third  of  the 
original  amount  is  finally  agreed  on  ;  and  then  his 
Magnificence  mounts  the  seat,  and  starts  off  the 
little  pony  like  a  shot. 

What  a  drive  we  took  !  The  road  was  excellent, 
as  it  always  is  where  imperial  England  or  imperial 
Rome  rules  the  province.  On  we  whirled  past  the 
spacious,  beautiful  bungalows  of  the  Europeans, 
the  porches  wreathed  with  a  wealth  of  purple 
bourgainvillia  vines,  and  splendid  with  flaming 
poinsettias  and  hibiscus,  and  picturesque  with 
palms ;  past  the  villages  of  Malay  houses,  set  up 
on  piles  in  swampy  districts ;  past  the  clay  huts  of 
the  country  people,  thatched  with  palm-leaves  and 


142  THE    TROPICS 

buried  in  thickets  of  banana,  bread-fruit,  and  jak- 
trees,  lightened  up  with  the  infinitely  varied  colors 
of  the  crotons.  The  last  native  town  we  had  seen 
was  heart-sickening  Canton,  its  depressing  mem- 
ories and  smells  still  clinging  to  the  skirts  of  mind 
and  coat.  Now  everything  was  sunny,  happy, 
open-air  life.  Poverty  is  nothing  in  such  a  cli- 
miate.  What  need  of  care  where  one  can  bring 
up  a  daughter  to  marriageable  age  for  about  three 
dollars !  The  more  children,  the  merrier.  At 
every  step  my  friend  and  I  were  pulling  one  an- 
other right  and  left  to  say :  "  Did  you  see  this  ? 
Did  you  see  that  ?  "  Now  it  was  a  young  mother, 
with  such  a  glory  of  a  little  naked  bronze  child 
astride  her  hips  ;  now  an  interior  of  Adamic  in- 
nocence around  the  common  dish,  into  which  all 
dipped  their  five-pronged  natural  forks  ;  now  a 
fruit-seller,  with  such  a  strange  variety  of  luscious 
specimens  unknown  by  very  name  to  us. 

Then,  too,  the  superb  flora  was  all  so  novel  It 
was  a  universal  Kew  Gardens  with  the  glass  roof 
off.  Jak-trees  and  calabash-trees  bearing  fruit  so 
heavy  that  it  would  brain  Og,  Gog,  and  Magog,  if 
it  fell  on  their  skulls  !  Clumps  of  bamboo  ninety 
feet  high  and  a  hundred  yards  in  circumference ! 
Magnificent  bread-fruit-trees,  each  separate  leaf  a 
miracle  of  size,  lustre,  and  beauty  of  form  !  Ban- 
yan-trees, striding  across  country  each  like  a  hun- 
dred-armed vegetable  Briareus,  making  after  the 
Titans,  not  on  all-fours,  but  on  all  eager  hun- 
dreds at  once  !  Enormous  rubber-trees,  their  whole 
gigantic  root  system  lying  exposed  above  ground, 


THE    BOTANICAL    GARDEN  143 

coiling  and  recoiling  on  themselves  like  an  acre  of 
huge  boa-constrictors !  Who  but  has  wished  at 
times  iu  life  that  some  Titan  might  deracinate  for 
him  a  giant  oak,  and  hold  it  up  that  he  could 
see  at  once  the  whole  aerial  suiDcrstructure,  and 
the  whole  terrestrial  substructure,  and  marvel  at 
such  a  creation?  Well,  the  grand,  century-old 
rubber-tree  gives  one  just  this  sight.  One  would 
think  a  Titan  had  torn  it  out  of  the  groimd,  and 
then  set  it  up,  balanced  and  supported  on  its  roots. 
The  effect  is  that  of  Tennyson's  "  Flower  in  the 
Crannied  Wall"  raised  to  the  ten-thousandth 
power,  and  with  proportionate  increase  in  the 
volume  of  the  religious  awe  inspired.  Yes,  the 
school-boy's  dream  of  Teneriffe  had  all  come  true ; 
and  the  heart  chimed  in  with  Wordsworth's  lyric 
burst :  — 

"  So  was  it  when  my  life  began ;  .  .  . 
So  be  it  when  I  shall  grow  old, 
Or  let  me  die  !  " 

Among  the  most  interesting  sights  in  Singa- 
pore is  the  Botanical  Garden,  in  which  are 
brought  together  the  greatest  possible  varieties  of 
tropical  trees,  shrubs,  vines,  and  flowers.  A  great 
botanical  garden  ranks  as  a  sort  of  vegetable 
anthology  of  the  poetry  of  the  natural  creation,  in 
which,  within  comparatively  narrow  bounds,  all  the 
choicest  extracts  from  the  genius  of  the  Amazon,  the 
Indus,  the  Ganges,  the  Irrawaddy,  and  the  islands 
of  the  sea  are  brought  together.  Unassisted  nature 
tends  to  run  all  to  nutmegs,  or  cinnamon,  or  royal 
palms,  or  bread-fruit,  or  bamboo ;  and  so  art  must 


144  THE    TROPICS 

step  in  to  insist  that  every  one  of,  say,  two  hundred 
and  fifty  varieties  of  pahns  shall  have  a  chance  to 
reveal  its  glories,  and  that  perambulating  banyans 
shall  not  be  permitted  to  stride  at  will  over  the 
whole  country.  Permanent  arboreal  settlers  there 
have  their  rights,  as  well  as  irresponsible  vegetable 
tramps.  The  Botanical  Garden,  moreover,  possesses 
another  immense  advantage  in  the  way  of  mental 
peace.  There,  while  the  pleasure-seeker  is  inspect- 
ing the  trees,  he  is  freed  from  the  necessity  of  stand- 
ing up  to  his  waist  in  a  Borneo  swamp,  or  keeping 
one  eye  out  for  an  emulous  boa-constrictor,  or  mis- 
taking the  stripes  down  a  tiger's  back  for  the  sheen 
of  a  clump  of  small  golden  bamboos,  and  thus 
falling  one  more  unwary  victim  to  that  dishonest 
"  imitative  principle  in  nature  "  so  fitted  to  deceive 
the  very  elect.     The  aesthetic  gain  is  immense. 

All  the  voyage  south  from  Hong  Kong,  my 
traveling  companion  and  I  had  been  reading 
with  keen  delight  Wallace's  "  Malay  Archipelago." 
How  infinitely  more  vivid  in  interest  every  page 
now  that  we  were  actually  entering  on  the  vast 
island  regions  of  Borneo,  Celebes,  Sumatra,  Java,  — 
that  veritable  El  Dorado  of  the  East  which  the 
Portuguese  fought  for  from  1500  to  1600,  the 
Dutch  from  1600  to  1700,  and  the  English  through- 
out the  present  century  I  In  none  of  the  chapters 
of  Wallace's  book  had  we  found  greater  pleasure 
than  in  the  descriptions  of  his  hunts  in  Borneo 
after  the  orang-utan,  and  his  studies  of  the  waj's  of 
that  Caliban  of  the  forests.     What,  then,  was  our 


A    BORNEO    PHILOSOPHER  145 

delight  at  finding'  in  the  grounds  of  the  Singapore 
garden  a  full-grown  specimen  of  the  brute ! 

The  especial  Borneo  gentleman  in  question 
stands  four  feet  two  inches  in  height,  while  his  fore 
arms  more  than  touch  the  ground  as  he  walks  erect, 
after  the  most  monstrous  biped-quadruped  fashion 
one  could  dream  out  in  a  nightmare.  Covered  with 
long,  black,  matted  hair,  and  adorned  with  a  red 
beard,  he  is  further  dowered  with  protruding  jaws 
powerful  enough  to  chew  up  whole  cocoanuts  and 
spit  out  the  shells  as  easily  as  ours  crush  grapes 
and  get  rid  of  the  skins.  This,  however,  is  but  the 
Caliban  side  of  the  creature,  the  lower,  elemental, 
evolutionai\y  force  that  is  now  in  travail  with  a 
higher  spiritual  force.  Immense,  then,  was  our 
surprise,  on  studying  him  more  closely,  to  find  that 
above  his  brute  jaws  arched  a  noble,  philosophic 
brow,  and  under  it  lay  a  pair  of  profound,  medita- 
tive eyes  that  irresistibly  reminded  one  of  Immanuel 
Kant.  The  contrast  was  fairly  startling.  Here, 
then,  in  epitome,  was  the  whole  creation  groaning 
and  travailing  in  pain  until  now,  waiting  for  the 
adoption,  to  wit,  the  redemption  of  the  brute  body  ! 

Our  Borneo  philosopher  occupied  an  apartment 
twenty  feet  each  way,  with  a  bare  tree  in  the  mid- 
dle, and  shut  in  on  the  four  sides  and  at  the  top  by 
heavy  iron  gratings.  In  his  periods  of  contempla- 
tive abstraction,  the  attitude  assumed  for  his  medi- 
tations differed  from  that  I  have  read  of  as  char- 
acteristic of  any  of  the  great  German  metaphy- 
sicians. Clinging  to  the  centre  of  the  iron  grating 
at  the  top  by  one  fore  hand  and  one  hind  hand,  the 


146  THE    TROPICS 

otlier  fore  arm  was  swung  clear  round  the  back  of 
liis  head  to  support  its  cerebral  weight,  while  the 
still  remaining  hind  arm  grasped  the  fore  arm 
employed  in  actual  suspension,  the  whole  resulting 
in  a  perfection  of  pendent  equilibrium  which  one 
felt  must  most  essentially  conduce  to  the  harmoni- 
ous balance  of  his  intellectual  faculties.  Irresisti- 
bly he  suggested  the  famous  picture,  in  the  Clouds 
of  Aristophanes,  of  Socrates  suspended  in  the  bas- 
ket and  lost  in  aerial  contemplation.  From  time 
to  time  a  mischievous  little  monkey  would  run 
across  the  top  of  the  grating  and  twitch  the  hair  of 
the  brooding  philosopher,  who  then  would  slowly 
turn  his  head  and  look  at  him  with  an  abstract 
gaze  that  saw  and  yet  saw  not. 

Absolutely  convinc'ed  were  my  friend  and  I  that 
the  great  book  on  the  true  philosophy  of  evolution 
was  then  and  there  being  brooded  out.  Thousands 
of  years  may  elapse  before  it  shall  be  permitted  to 
issue  from  the  press ;  but  then  will  it  assert  itself 
as  the  work  of  one  subjectively  and  objectively 
authorized  to  expound  the  vast  theme,  of  one  having 
all  the  slime  and  the  lotus  flower,  all  the  brute  and 
the  angel,  in  his  own  compound  organization.  For 
now,  in  an  instant,  a  revelation  of  the  two  contra- 
dictory elements  in  our  arboreal  Immanuel  Kant! 
In  the  levity  of  our  own  minds  growing  weary 
of  such  protracted  meditation,  we  would  ask  the 
keeper  to  bring  a  lot  of  paw-paws,  when,  lo  !  in  a 
flash,  the  Caliban  would  dominate  the  philosopher  ; 
and  down  the  gratings  would  he  climb,  working 
across  the  floor  with  an  inconceivable  monstrosity 


A    BORNEO    PHILOSOPHER  147 

of  brute  awkwardness,  and  cramming  the  paw-paws 
into  his  terrible  jaws.  The  brute  in  his  nature  laid 
to  rest,  again  would  the  j^rofound  thinker  resort  to 
his  aerial  suspension,  and  resume  the  thread  of 
broken  contemplation.  Oh,  that  Robert  Browning, 
with  his  deep  psychical  insight,  could  have  seen 
him  !  There  was  material  there  for  a  profounder 
poem  than  "  Caliban  on  Setebos."  Browning's 
Caliban  had  no  outreaching,  prophetic  element  in 
him.  In  this  Caliban  it  was  impossible  not  to  feel 
it  working,  —  an  elemental,  slowly  differentiating, 
secular  force  ! 


CEYLON 

There  is  a  Mohammedan  legend  that,  after 
their  expulsion  from  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
Adam  and  Eve  were  penally  transported  to  Ceylon. 
How  inconceivably  beautiful  must  Eden  have  been 
if  Ceylon  was  looked  on  in  comparison  as  a  sort  of 
Botany  Bay  !  Personally,  I  would  brave  the  conse- 
quences of  barrels  of  forbidden  fruit  for  one  day  of 
exile  there.  As  to  the  truth  of  the  legend  I  cannot 
vouch,  further  than  to  attest  that  the  shallow  strait 
dividing  Ceylon  from  India  is  called  Adam's  Strait, 
and  one  of  the  highest  of  the  mountains  Adam's 
Peak.  Readers  of  the  Indian  epic,  the  Ramayana, 
will  further  recall  that  this  was  the  strait  bridged 
by  the  king  of  the  monkeys,  to  enable  heroic  Rama 
to  rescue  his  stolen  wife,  Sita. 

On  our  voyage  from  Singapore,  all  the  way 
throuoh  the  Straits  of  Malacca  and  across  the  (jreat 
southern  ocean,  we  carried  with  us  the  same  beau- 
tiful weather  and  smooth  seas  that  had  favored 
us  the  entire  course  from  Japan.  December  21 
we  sighted  Ceylon  in  the  late  evening,  and  before 
ten  o'clock  the  next  morning  had  skirted  the  whole 
southern  coast  of  the  island,  then  turned  northward, 
and  rounded  the  great  breakwater  into  the  harbor 
of  Colombo.  Very  beautiful  was  the  sight  from 
our  steamship's  deck.     The  handsome  Renaissance 


160  CEYLON 

architecture  of  the  great  hotels  and  government 
buildings  along  the  quay,  the  immense,  sweeping 
curves  of  the  rose-tinted  beaches,  backed  by  forests 
of  cocoanut-j)alms,  and  behind  them  the  lofty  peaks 
of  the  mountains  of  the  interior,  combined  in  a 
chai'mlng  picture. 

How  one  envies  England  the  possession  of  so 
superb  an  island  as  Ceylon,  two  thirds  as  large  as 
all  Ireland !  And  how  one  must  praise  the  mag- 
nificent way  in  which  she  administers  its  affairs ! 
She  is  the  legitimate  successor  of  imperial  Rome. 
Rutlilessly  may  she  conquer,  but  in  the  train  of 
conquest  follows  the  broadest,  the  wisest,  the  most 
humane  and  tolerant  statesmanship  the  world  has 
ever  witnessed.  To  be  humbled  by  her  is  to  be 
exalted  by  her.  For  back  of  the  greedy,  unscru- 
pulous, mercantile  adventurers  and  half  pirates 
that  are  the  first  aggressors,  lies  the  great  truth- 
speaking,  justice-loving.  Christian  civilization  of 
the  home  nation,  ever  with  its  Edmund  Burke,  or 
kindred  moral  genius,  to  voice  the  deeper  sentiment 
of  the  people  for  righteousness  and  mercy.  What 
a  noble  breed  of  men  the  proconsuls  she  has  sent 
out  to  rule  a  realm  like  India,  —  men  heroic  in 
courage,  supremely  loyal  to  duty,  enlightened  in 
intellect,  devout  in  feeling,  an  honor  to  humanity, 
their  biographies  a  more  than  modern  Plutarch ! 
Blessed  the  nation  that  has  such  constellations  of 
worthies  with  which  to  fire  the  soul  of  its  more 
generous  and  aspiring  youth ! 


AN   ARYAN   PEOPLE  151 

The  first  drive  on  the  island,  one  unbroken 
succession  of  fascinating  tropical  pictures, 
alike  in  the  luxuriance  of  the  vegetation  and  the 
grace  and  color  of  tlie  Singhalese  and  Tamil  men, 
women,  and  children,  brought  home  to  my  friend 
and  myself  one  exulting  feeling,  to  which  both  gave 
hearty  expression.  "  Heaven  be  praised !  we  are 
once  more  among  an  Aryan  people  !  Blood  is 
thicker  than  water !  "  Here  were  our  own  features, 
our  own  caste  of  thought  and  feeling,  our  own 
image  cut  in  bronze  or  ebony.  What  if  we  did  set 
out  from  our  common  home  countless  centuries  ago, 
one  branch  of  the  family  wandering  to  the  farthest 
confines  of  India,  and  the  other  bringing  up  at 
last  in  San  Francisco  !  Across  the  vast  abyss  had 
we  ever,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  yearned  in 
thought  and  aspiration,  and  when  at  length  our 
great  literatures  came  together,  we  found  we  had 
the  same  fond  words  for  father  and  mother  and 
hearth  and  home.  I  felt  like  hugging  and  kissing 
the  whole  Aryan  race.  For,  be  it  confessed,  the 
dreary  weight  of  the  vast  Mongol-Malay  race  had 
for  months  been  oppressing  my  soul  with  nightmare. 
Wherever  I  had  struck  it  and  whatever  I  had  read 
of  it,  whether  in  Thibet,  Tartary,  China,  Mongolia, 
Corea,  Japan,  or  the  fairly  continental  Malay 
Archipelago,  it  had  seemed  to  me  one  and  the  same 
thing,  devoid  of  deep  inwardness  of  feeling,  an 
exterior  mask  of  manner,  incapable  of  any  of  the 
achievements  that  are  dearest  to  us,  —  the  epic  and 
drama  of  Homer  and  Kalidasa,  of  Dante  and  Shake- 
speare, the  music  of   Beethoven  and   Mozart,  the 


162  CEYLON 

sculj)ture  and  architecture  of  Asia  Minor,  Persia, 
and  Greece,  the  chivalrous  worship  of  woman,  the 
philosophy  of  Germany  and  India,  the  religion  that 
has  dowered  Syria,  India,  and  Europe  with  its 
hierarchy  of  saints.  All  in  vain  is  it  to  say  that 
the  majority  of  Aryans  know  nothing  of  all  this. 
They  do :  it  is  in  their  blood,  in  their  literature,  in 
their  common  speech,  in  their  whole  spiritual  edu- 
cation, and  ever  ready  to  flower  out  afresh.  But 
in  the  vast  Mongol-Malay  stock  so  wanting  is  it 
that,  whether  any  given  American,  German,  or 
Italian  traveler  is  capable  of  analyzing  the  matter 
or  not,  or  can  only  express  his  sentiments  by  pro- 
fanity ;  he  feels  the  ethnological  fact  by  instinct, 
recoils  from  it,  and  is  oppressed  by  it. 

However  brief  his  stay  in  Ceylon,  the  trav- 
eler generally  spends  a  few  days  in  Kandy, 
some  eighteen  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  among 
the  mountains  of  the  interior.  Kandy  is  now 
reached  by  a  railway,  —  a  marvel  of  engineering 
skill,  hardly  to  be  surpassed  by  anything  the  world 
shows !  Indescribable  the  view,  as  one  skirts  the 
flanks  of  the  mountains,  and  looks  down  into  an 
enormous  gorge,  its  sides  clad  with  the  most  varied 
and  luxuriant  foliage,  and  its  streams  winding 
among  the  trees  and  level  bottom  lands  below, 
transformed  into  cascades  and  lakes  of  the  ex- 
quisitely delicate  green  of  the  young  rice !  In- 
deed, in  Ceylon  the  glory  of  the  tropics  fairly  cul- 
minates. One  would  not  believe  it  possible  that 
such  a  sense  of  indescribable  happiness  could  be  set 


KANDY  153 

welling  and  gushing  from  the  worn  and  weary  heart 
by  the  mere  presence  of  this  luxuriant  exuberance  of 
nature.  The  influence  is  irresistible.  Life's  pain 
and  grief  seem  absorbed  into  it,  swallowed  up  by  it, 
mantled  all  over,  as  it  so  quickly  mantles  its  ruins 
with  gorgeous  flowering  vines  and  stupendous  trees. 
Arrived  in  Kandy,  one  finds  himself  by  the  shore 
of  a  charming  little  lake,  its  banks  embowered  in 
wide-branching  tamarind-trees  and  royal  palms, 
and,  above,  diversified  by  the  vine-clad  bungalows 
of  the  European  tea-planters.  Close  at  hand  is  the 
picturesque  little  Malagawa  Buddhist  temple,  the 
most  sacred  shrine  on  earth  of  Buddhism  ;  for  there 
is  preserved  for  veneration  an  actual  tooth  of  Bud- 
dha, which,  though  once  sacrilegiously  stolen  by 
the  Portuguese,  and  carried  to  Goa  in  India,  and 
there  solemidy  burned  to  lime  in  the  presence  of  a 
great  concourse  of  ecclesiastics,  still  offers  its  merits 
for  the  edification  of  the  faithful.  As  the  tooth  is 
two  inches  and  a  half  long  and  one  inch  and  a  quar- 
ter broad,  skeptics  have  doubted  its  human  authen- 
ticity. Their  cavils  left  me  unmoved.  Already 
had  I  seen,  in  two  widely  separate  places,  footprints 
of  Buddha  in  granite,  six  feet,  at  least,  in  length. 
So  far,  then,  from  finding  anything  disproportion- 
ate in  the  size  of  the  tooth,  it  served  as  a  confirma- 
tion of  my  wavering  faith  in  the  footprints.  Of 
far  greater  importance,  however,  is  the  fact  that 
in  this  temple  are  preserved  the  ancient  Pali  texts, 
which  bring  the  student  of  to-day  into  the  nearest 
contact  with  original  Buddhism  that  can  now  be 
had. 


154  CEYLON 

It  was  on  Christmas  Eve  that  we  arrived 
in  Kandy,  and  by  sunrise  the  next  morning 
I  was  out  to  greet  in  the  tropics  the  blessed  day. 
Child  of  the  wintry  North,  where  was  I  ?  No 
sound  of  sleigh-bells  jingled  on  the  frozen  air. 
No  frost-nipped  imagination  suggested  overcoat  or 
mittens.  The  charming  little  lake  close  at  hand 
breathed,  indeed,  its  invitation  — not,  however,  to 
skim  with  skates  its  icy  surface,  but  to  jump  into 
its  bosom  for  a  delicious  swim.  In  circuit  a  mile 
or  more,  it  was  overhung  with  royal  palms,  —  the 
the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  palms,  —  and  with 
century-old  tamarind-trees,  dipping  the  feathery 
tips  of  their  branches  into  the  water.  A  wealth  of 
flowering  vines  —  scarlet,  purple,  gold  —  climbed 
every  tree-trunk  and  festooned  every  cliff.  Close 
at  hand  was  the  Buddhist  monastery,  and  on  its 
steps  the  yellow-robed  monks  and  acolytes  chanting 
their  hymns  and  prayers.  Men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren on  the  road  greeted  me  with  a  winning  charm 
unknown  to  our  angular  race,  their  beautiful  eyes 
suffused  with  a  Nirvana-like  peace,  which,  though 
their  lips  uttered  no  Merry  Christmas,  yet  breathed 
its  loving  spirit  on  the  air.  Thus  gently  saunter- 
ing along,  I  completed  the  circuit  of  the  lake  to 
where  its  waters  overflow  in  a  plunge  thirty  feet 
down  into  a  lovely  pool.     Then  what  a  picture  ! 

Men,  women,  and  children  were  reveling  in 
their  early  morning  bath,  —  the  men  and  boys 
rioting  in  splendid  somersaults  from  the  cliffs  ;  the 
women  huddled  together  more  apart,  but  laughing 
and  chattering   in   the   merriest  way.     And  now 


CHRISTMAS    IN   KANDY  155 

the  genuine  Cliristmas-gift  spirit  revived  in  my 
heart.  No  pent-up  Utica  of  presents,  as  at  home,  of 
fur  gloves  and  knit  hug-me-tights  longer  contracted 
my  powers.  My  soul  expanded  in  tropical  exuber- 
ance. I  yearned  to  be  an  Indian  prince  with 
ample  means  to  create  crystal-clear  Diana  baths 
like  this  for  happy  people  in  Massachusetts  to 
leap  into  on  every  early  morning  of  December  25, 
—  the  blessed  season  of  the  year,  when,  as  all  New 
Englanders  so  well  know,  the  air  is  so  deliciously 
warm,  the  water  so  seductive  in  its  invitation,  and 
the  pleasure  so  exquisite  of  lying  out  in  the  golden 
sunshine  to  dry. 

On  Christmas  Day,  if  ever  in  the  year,  a  prin- 
ciple of  pure  disinterested  sympathy  with  the  joys 
of  others  should  be  the  dominant  note  of  the  soul. 
Yet,  how  much  easier  is  it  to  be  thus  unselfish 
under  certain  conditions  than  under  others  !  No- 
where, for  example,  the  man  who  shares  a  more 
absolute  faith  than  I  in  the  tonic  virtue  of  a  zero 
winter  climate,  —  especially  shares  it  when  lying 
out  in  luxurious  ease  in  the  tropics.  That  day, 
then,  I  felt  so  disinterestedly  glad  for  all  the  dear 
ones  in  America,  so  thankful  that  they  were  expe- 
riencing the  fine  exliilaration  of  the  snow  and  ice 
tingling-  in  their  blood,  and  that  their  cheeks  were 
so  ruddy  and  their  appetites  so  whetted  as  with  a 
scythe-stone.  No  trace  of  envy  breathed  a  stain 
on  the  smooth  mirror  of  my  soul.  Their  super- 
abundant energy,  their  freedom  from  any  desire 
for  a  moment's  rest,  their  magical  power  of  extract- 
ing sunbeams  from   anthracite,  their   capacity   to 


156  CEYLON 

get  pleasure  out  of  one  little  evergreen  bush,  in 
alleviation  of  the  bare,  wind-lashed  oaks  and 
maples  around  them  —  yes,  it  seemed  so  graciously 
delightful  to  lie  stretched  out  under  a  tamarind- 
tree,  and  to  contemplate  all  this  as  the  happy  lot  of 
others.  Whole  groups  of  them  could  I  see,  in  my 
mind's  eye,  holding  on  tight  to  their  hats  and 
bonnets  as  they  staggered  out  from  their  front 
doors  to  face  the  blizzard,  while  congratulatingly  I 
cried  :  "  Ah  !  that  is  the  making  of  a  hardy,  brave, 
virtuous,  and  much-enduring  people.  Long  may 
you  be  subjected  to  it !  " 

In  the  tropics,  the  sense  of  the  sweetness  of  rest 
carries  with  it  a  primal,  elemental  meaning  it  can 
rarely  share  in  a  far  northern  climate.  In  Mas- 
sachusetts, for  example,  it  is  Tennyson's  poem  of 
"Ulysses,"  the  gray-haired  old  mariner,  who  at 
eighty  is  too  nervously  restless  to  sit  down  in 
quiet  for  an  hour  by  his  fireside  to  reflect  on  past 
experience,  but  must  be  projecting  some  new  seal 
or  walrus  voyage  to  Baffin's  Bay  or  beyond ;  it  is 
the  "  Ulysses "  that  carries  the  day  in  attraction 
over  any  poetry  of  dreamy  rest  like  "  The  Lotos- 
Eaters."  While  "  The  Lotos-Eaters "  is  an  ex- 
quisite rendering  of  the  inmost  essence  of  the  Bud- 
dhistic ideal  of  Nirvana,  the  only  ideal  of  Nirvana 
that  appears  to  sanction  repose  to  the  average 
American  housekeeper,  haunted  by  seven  dust 
devils  that  will  not  go  out  of  her,  or  hai-ried  by 
her  exacerbated  conscience  into  an  endless  vortex 
of  committee  meetings,  seems  to  be  the  final  goal 
of  fairly  earned   collapse    in  nervous  prostration. 


CHRISTMAS   IN   KANDY  157 

Then  first  is  her  moral  being  temporarily  at  peace. 
"  I  would  if  I  could ;  but,  if  I  cannot,  how  can 
I  ?  But  ache  hard,  O  head,  and  pain  wearily,  O 
spine,  that  I  may  feel  myself  justified  in  the  eye 
of  heaven  and  earth  in  submitting-  to  the  mortifi- 
cation of  trying  to  compass  a  little  rest !  "  This 
is  not  the  view  entertained  in  Ceylon. 

No,  all  day  long  I  could  not  but  feel  I  was  in  a 
Buddhist  land, — a  land  in  which  the  natural  ap- 
peal of  climate  to  dreamy  repose  had  been  lifted 
by  a  great  spiritual  genius  into  the  realm  of  an  es- 
pecial religious  faith.  It  was  Christmas  Day,  but 
of  this  the  people  all  around  me  knew  nothing. 
Had  they  kept  holiday,  it  would  have  been  in 
commemoration  of  their  own  saviour,  the  Buddha. 
No  end  of  angel  songs  over  his  coming  into  the 
world  had  they  wherewith  to  celebrate  his  advent 
day.  He  was,  moreover,  the  nearest  akin  to 
Jesus,  in  the  spirit  of  merciful  compassion,  of  all 
the  founders  of  the  great  world  religions.  It  w^as, 
indeed,  no  such  ideal  of  rest  as  Jesus  revealed,  — 
rest  in  the  everlasting  arms  of  omnipotent  Wis- 
dom, Holiness,  and  Love ;  but  it  was  a  rest  none 
the  less  unsjjeakably  sweet  and  tranquillizing, — 
rest  from  the  care  and  fret  of  the  finite,  deliverance 
from  the  power  of  the  external  to  perturb  the 
mind's  serenity  or  to  wound  with  heart-ache. 

Ah  !  the  Occident  and  the  Orient !  —  how  pa- 
thetically do  they  need  one  another  !  The  Western 
mind  roots  so  in  the  finite  and  manifold  that  life 
becomes  to  it  a  fitful  fever  ;  while  the  Eastern  so 
absorbs  itself  in  the  invisible  and  immutable  that 


158  CEYLON 

finite  life  evaporates  in  dream  and  illusion.  Each 
sense  is  needful  to  temper  the  stress  of  the  other ; 
each  is  indispensable  for  sanity  and  for  inward 
peace. 

A  pleasant  drive's  distance  from  Kandy  lie 
the  famous  Peradeniya  Botanical  Gardens. 
They  contain,  as  an  instance,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
varieties  of  palms,  with  everything  else  on  the  same 
magnificent  scale.  AVhy  make  a  futile  attempt  to 
detail  at  length  the  joy  of  wandering  in  them  ?  A 
description  of  a  clump  of  bamboo,  one  hundred  feet 
in  height  and  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  circum- 
ference, its  clustered  polished  reed  columns  sur- 
mounted by  a  world  of  feathery  ostrich  plumes,  is 
a  piece  of  barren  statistics.  The  sight  of  it  is  a 
marvel  forever.  Enough  that  the  traveler  from  the 
far  north  is  enraptured  with  the  single  sense, 
"Behold  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  I  "  For  all 
is  new.  Instead  of  the  apple  there  comes  up  the 
mango-tree,  and  instead  of  the  oak  the  rubber-tree. 
Poor,  sad-hearted  Lessing,  weary  of  the  monotony 
of  the  ever-recurring  spring,  one  day  broke  out, 
"  Oh,  that  for  once,  instead  of  in  the  same  eternal 
green,  it  would  come  out  attired  in  red  or  orange 
or  purple  !  "  Had  he  but  gone  to  Ceylon,  he  would 
have  found  the  exhilarating  sensation  of  change  he 
craved.  An  absolutely  new  flora  seems  to  imply 
an  absolutely  new  life  in  man.  The  caterpillar  in 
his  nature  changes  into  a  silkworm,  the  homely 
robin  into  a  bird  of  paradise.  Adam  and  Eve 
combined,  and  in   their  first  fresh  honeymoon  in 


AN    ECCLESIASTICAL    INTERVIEW     159 

Eden,  could  not  have  felt  more  supremely  happy 
than  I  in  wandering  round  and  pocketing  poetic 
nutmegs  and  cloves  instead  of  prosaic  hickory-nuts 
and  filberts,  in  chewing  a  twig  of  spicy  cinnamon 
instead  of  a  twig  of  ordinary  sweet-birch,  —  ay, 
and  in  going  up  to  a  cinchona-tree  and  slicing  off 
a  bit  of  the  bark,  and  taking  my  quinine  au  natu- 
rel^  instead  of  seeking  out  a  duly  licensed  apothe- 
cary shop  and  buying  a  dozen  highly  sublimated 
pills  of  the  same  extraction.  The  fall  in  Adam 
was  condoned  and  blotted  out.  I  was  restored  to 
Paradise.  All  controversy  over  the  original  site 
of  Eden  for  me  was  ended.  It  was  there  that 
"  the  Lord  God  planted  a  garden,  and  out  of  the 
ground  made  to  grow  every  tree  that  is  pleasant 
to  the  sight  and  good  for  food." 

Before  leaving  Kandy,  it  seemed  evidently 
the  proper  thing  that  a  solemn  international 
ecclesiastical  interview  shoiild  take  place  between 
the  high  priest  of  Buddhism,  presiding  over  the 
most  sacred  shrine  of  the  faith  on  earth,  and  the 
peripatetic  representative  of  a  body  that  thinks 
itself  the  most  enlightened  in  the  Athens  of 
America.  So,  procuring  an  interpreter,  —  whose 
theological  attainments,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  did  not 
reach  beyond  the  rule  of  three,  and  his  linguistic 
not  so  high,  —  I  went  with  my  traveling  compan- 
ion to  the  monastery ;  and,  sending  in  our  cards, 
we  united  with  them  the  petition  that  we  might 
have  the  privilege  of  a  conference.  The  favor  was 
at  once   conceded.     Very  likely,  as  Mrs.   Besant 


IGO  CEYLON 

had  lately  been  in  Ceylon,  assui-ing  the  natives  of 
the  immense  superiority  of  Buddhism  over  Chris- 
tianity, the  high  priest  regarded  us  as  equally 
hopeful  subjects. 

Curious  was  the  scene  that  followed.  The  mon- 
astery was  very  humble  in  its  appointments,  but 
with  a  dreamy  atmosphere  of  all-day  siesta  about  it. 
On  a  rather  dilapidated  sofa  sat  the  high  priest,  en- 
wrapped in  the  traditional  yellow  of  the  Buddhist 
monk,  his  right  arm  and  shoulder  bare,  and  no 
apparent  underclothing  beneath  the  single  sheetlike 
garment,  —  a  style  of  apparel  which,  in  the  sweep 
it  afforded  the  bare  arm  over  the  whole  surface  of 
the  body,  seemed,  in  a  climate  in  which  relief  is 
often  sought  from  cutaneous  irritations,  eminently 
conducive  to  tranquillity  of  mind.  He  was  seventy 
years  old,  his  skull  as  close-shaven  as  a  cannon-ball, 
and  was,  moreover,  one  who  had  certainly  attained 
the  goal  of  Nirvana  as  far  as  teeth  have  any  fur- 
ther power  to  ache.  Around  were  gathered  six  or 
eight  young  monks,  one  or  two  of  them  alert  and 
eager  to  join  in  the  fray,  as  the  talk  proceeded. 
As  my  traveling  companion  is  a  veteran  editor, 
our  party  was  fully  equipped  with  a  rajjid-firing 
Gatling  gun  for  the  discharge  of  volleys  of  ques- 
tions. 

The  discussion  of  nice  metaphysical  distinctions 
through  the  medium  of  an  interpreter  so  flagrantly 
ignorant  as  to  be  graveled  even  over  such  a  bagatelle 
as  the  points  of  difference  between  the  homogeneous 
and  the  heterogeneous,  is  not  wont  to  be  conducive 
either   to   sweetness   or   light.     So   the   interview 


AN  ECCLESIASTICAL  INTERVIEW      161 

proved  of  attraction  rather  in  the  way  of  picture 
and  atmosphere  than  of  positive  illumination. 

We  began,  of  course,  with  an  inquiry  as  to  the 
high  priest's  view  of  Nirvana,  whether  a  conscious 
or  unconscious  state,  present  or  a  future.  He 
answered  that  it  was  too  deep  a  question  to  be 
discussed  in  a  short  interview.  We  then  passed  on 
to  the  subject  of  creation  and  Creator.  He  replied  : 
"  The  world  never  was  created.  It  was  not  made, 
it  gTew,"  —  an  answer  that  while  unimpeachable 
evolutionary  orthodoxy,  sounded  oddly,  from  the 
way  it  was  enunciated,  like  Topsy's  in  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,"  —  "I  warn't  made  :  I  jist  growed." 
Next  we  asked  for  a  succinct  statement  of  the  es- 
sential principle  of  Buddhism.  He  gave  it  in  five 
negative  prohibitions  against  killing,  lying,  steal- 
ing, and  unchastity.  Then  we  passed  on  to  Chris- 
tianity, inquiring  if  he  had  ever  read  the  Gospels. 
He  said  he  had,  and  had  found  their  teachings  very 
contradictory,  —  not  half  so  plain  as  Buddhism. 
I  finally  thought  I  would  try  him  as  to  the  extent 
to  which  he  would  follow  his  five  pi'inciples.  "  Sup- 
pose a  cobra  should  come  into  the  room  here,"  I 
said;  "would  you  kill  him?"  "  No,"  he  replied. 
"  What  would  you  do  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Remove  him." 
This  was  accompanied  with  a  gentle  motion,  as 
though  he  had  taken  up  a  broom  and  was  quietly 
sweeping  out  a  bit  of  paper.  After  all,  the  tone  of 
voice  and  the  quiet  attitude  with  which  this  was 
expressed  were  the  one  memoi-able  thing  in  our 
conversation.  Could  we  have  really  come  to  close 
quarters  intellectually,  no  doubt  the  venerable  man 


1G2  CEYLON 

would  have  lost  us  in  a  labyrinth  of  metaj)hysical 
subtleties  from  which  we  could  hardly  have  found 
our  way  out  to  the  light  of  day.  But  here  was 
something  better.  Here  was  the  deepest  thing  in 
Buddhism,  its  sense  of  the  one  universal  life,  its 
feeling  of  compassion  with  the  vast  sentient  struggle 
going  on  from  the  serpent  on  his  belly  to  Buddha 
lapsed  in  Nirvana,  its  identification  of  self  with  the 
all  in  all.  How  I  longed  to  see  a  cobra  come 
gliding  in,  then  coil  himself  and  rear  his  terrible 
poison-fanged  head  for  a  stroke,  while  the  yellow- 
robed  old  patriarch  should  quietly  rise,  and  with  a 
feather-duster  in  hand  as  gently  "  remove  "  him  as 
that  dear  old  English  Buddhist,  Uncle  Toby,  did 
the  fly,  when  he  opened  the  window  for  him  with 
the  loving  word,  "  The  world  is  wide  enough  for 
thee  and  for  me."  Not  for  a  moment  did  I  doubt 
that  in  the  spell  of  his  religion  the  quietistic  old 
man  could  tenderly  have  done  it ;  whereas  if  either 
of  us  two  devout  Christians  had  undertaken  the 
removal,  even  with  a  street-sweeper's  broom  of 
birch  twigs,  such  enmity  would  have  been  set  on 
between  serpent  and  "  seed  of  the  woman  "  that 
the  issue  of  the  conflict  would  have  been  problem- 
atical to  the  last  degree. 


INDIA 


The  voyage  of  thirteen  hundred  miles  from 
Ceylon  to  Calcutta  is  pleasantly  broken  by 
a  short  stay  in  Pondicherry  and  in  Madras,  —  some- 
times also,  it  is  true,  unpleasantly  broken  by  fright- 
ful typhoons,  cyclonic  mast  and  funnel  twisters 
that  extract  by  their  roots  these  mighty  columns  of 
wood  or  iron  as  easily  as  a  prairie  stump-puller  the 
fangs  of  pines  and  oaks.  But  still  we  sailed  over 
the  same  summer  seas. 

Truly,  if  anywhere  that  saddest  of  thoughts,  "  it 
might  have  been,"  strikes  home  with  sharp  historic 
pang,  it  must  be  to  the  Frenchman  disembarking 
at  Pondicherry  and  looking  around  him  at  about 
all  that  remains  of  his  counti-y's  once  magnificent 
dream  of  Indian  empire.  There  first  the  splendid 
genius  of  Desaix  divined  India,  and  flashed  out 
in  every  detail  the  amazing,  but  entirely  feasible, 
programme  carried  into  execution  by  the  practical 
minds  of  Clive,  Hastings,  Wellington,  and  Napier. 
Not  Alexander  starting  out  from  Macedonia  with 
a  handful  of  disciplined  Greeks  to  fling  them  on 
the  millions  of  Asia,  and  to  swell  his  forces  with 
fresh  armies  of  sepoys  as  he  marched  along,  ever 
had  a  more  prophetic  eye  than  Desaix.     As  late 


164  INDIA 

even  as  1802,  Napoleon,  with  his  passion  for  the 
"  barbaric  pearls  and  gold  "  of  the  East  and  his 
fascination  by  the  cj^clonic  careers  of  the  Ghengis 
Khans  and  Tamerlanes  of  Asia,  was  still  nursing 
the  same  imperial  dream. 

Yet  to-day  in  all  effete  and  decaying  Pondi- 
cherry,  the  most  attractive  thing  the  traveler  finds 
to  do  is  to  jjo  outside  the  settlement  at  sunrise 
to  the  public  fountains  and  watch  the  beautiful 
young  Indian  women  drawing  the  day's  su^jjily  of 
water.  The  lithe  and  graceful  Caryatides,  each 
with  her  gauzy  sheet  of  sky  blue  or  scarlet  girt 
round  her  waist  and  falling  in  folds  to  her  ankles, 
the  other  end  thrown  over  one  shoulder  and  down 
the  back,  leaving  exposed  her  bronzed  sides  and 
arms  to  support  the  shapely  vase  of  brass  poised 
on  her  head,  —  here  is  a  life-school  for  the  artist 
that  might  tempt  him  to  many  a  lingering  month 
of  stay.  Ah !  sighs  the  enraptured  gazer,  why 
cannot  use  and  beauty,  work  and  play,  thus  always 
be  made  to  harmonize  ?  Doubtless,  with  our  own 
boasted  advent  of  the  scientific  age  of  plumbing, 
enabling  each  gracious  damsel  to  draw,  for  herself 
and  by  herself,  her  prosaic  pail  of  water  at  the 
kitchen  sink,  there  came  a  deal  of  saving  in  the 
way  of  time  and  strength.  But  alas !  for  the 
sunshine,  laughter,  and  gossip  that  went  out  with 
it.  Where,  under  such  a  disenchanting  disj^ensa- 
tion,  would  have  been  the  romantic  idyl  of  Isaac 
and  Rebecca,  with  all  the  wealth  of  poetry  that 
has  shed  its  halo  around  Indian,  Syrian,  Arabian, 
Persian  maidens  gathered  at  the  public  fountains 
to  draw  their  vessels  of  crystal  water  ? 


THE  HOOGLY  165 

Our  plan,  on  arriving  in  Calcutta,  was  to 
strike  at  once  northward  to  visit  the  Hima- 
layas,  and  then  return  to  see  the  city.  As  fit  prepa- 
ration for  a  sight  of  these  stupendous  ranges,  and  to 
give  the  mind  the  requisite  geologic  stretch  to  take 
them  in,  commend  me  to  a  sail  up  the  Hoogly, 
one  of  the  mighty  streams  through  which  the  hun- 
dred-mouthed Ganges  pours  out  into  the  ocean  its 
continental  waste.  "  By  their  works  ye  shall  know 
them."  Here,  then,  before  the  eyes  are  the  works 
of  the  Himalayas,  of  their  vast  storehouses  of  snow, 
of  their  enormous  rainfall,  of  their  stupendous  sup- 
plies of  disintegrating  material.  What  a  process  of 
world-building  !  —  enormous  islands  of  mud  form- 
ing in  a  day,  and  forthwith  under  the  generative 
force  of  the  tropical  heat  breeding  dense  jungles  of 
vegetation  and  spawning  for  them  their  broods  of 
serpents  and  tigers.  Yet,  dangerous  for  poor  little 
man  to  tempt  his  fate  amid  such  colossal  operations 
of  nature.  The  terror  of  rivers  is  the  Hoogly  to  the 
sailor.  Nowhere  else  do  pilots  receive  such  pay. 
Even  Caesar  there  would  be  too  subdued  for  brag- 
gadocia,  and  humbly  admit  that  no  matter  whether 
they  carried  him  or  the  obscurest  tourist,  each 
would  prove  an  eqijally  insignificant  midget  in  the 
face  of  such  overwhelming  forces.  And  the  bluff 
John  Bull  pilot,  too,  would  take  him  at  the  same 
lowly  estimate.  Experience  of  but  a  month  back, 
and  the  pilot  for  to-day's  run  is  turned  into  a 
superannuated  Methuselah,  so  perpetually  are  shoal 
and  current  shifting.  Touch  bottom  anywhere  for 
a  moment  and  so  afford  a  pivot  in  the  keel,  and  over 


166  INDIA 

and  over  does  the  mighty  tide  shoulder  and  roll 
ship  and  freight,  whirling  them  under  to  destruc- 
tion. Yes,  here  are  the  works  of  the  Himalayas ! 
How  one  longs  to  stand  in  their  overwhelming 
presence ! 

^^     Three  hundred  and  fifty  miles  due  north 
III.  .  .      . 

from  Calcutta  lies  Darjeeling.     In  the  little 

mountain  province  of  Sikkim,  thrust  in  between 
Bhotan  to  the  east  and  Nepal  to  the  west,  it  af- 
fords a  superb  platform,  some  seven  thousand  feet 
in  height,  from  which  to  survey  the  Himalayas. 
Dear,  likewise,  to  the  English  mother's  heart  as  a 
place  of  refuge  for  her  fair-haired,  blue-eyed  little 
Saxon  boys  and  girls  from  the  slaughter  of  the 
innocents  decreed  by  the  feller  than  Herod  fury 
of  the  sun  of  India  I 

For  the  first  three  hundred  miles  the  railway 
runs  across  the  vast  dead  level  of  northern  India, 
—  a  plain  which,  on  an  enormously  greater  scale, 
bears  the  same  relation  to  the  Himalayas  as  Lora- 
bardy  to  the  Alps.  Substitute  for  the  Po  the 
Ganges  and  its  tributaries ;  for  the  vine  and  mul- 
berry, rice  and  jute  fields,  palms  and  bananas  ;  and 
for  Monte  Rosa,  Mt.  Blanc,  and  the  Jungf ran,  peaks 
like  Mt.  Everest  and  Kinchinjanga,  wliose  actual 
snow-line  only  starts  at  an  elevation  higher  than  the 
summit  of  Mt.  Blanc,  —  and  some  slight  estimate 
may  be  formed  of  the  comparative  geologic  scale 
on  which  nature  has  wrought  in  the  two  regions. 

These  first  three  hundred  miles  of  the  journey  I 
pass  over,  till  the  station  of  Silliguri  is  reached. 


DARJEELING  167 

From  this  point  to  Darjeeling,  fifty  miles  away,  the 
ascent  of  over  seven  thousand  feet  is  made  by  a 
narrow  gauge  railway,  in  open  observation  cars. 
The  road  is  a  marvelous  piece  of  engineering  skill. 
Seven  hours  are  occupied  in  the  ascent,  but  nowhere 
else  in  the  world  can  so  much  of  tropical  beauty 
and  mountain  glory  be  crowded  into  the  same  space 
of  time.  The  track  winds  and  rewinds  upon  itself, 
now  in  mile-long  serpentine  curves,  and  now  in  lit- 
tle loops  ;  but  everywhere  it  opens  views  down  into 
ravishing  valleys  and  gorges,  clad  with  the  most 
luxuriant  and  varied  vegetation  of  palms,  bananas, 
tree  ferns,  thirty  feet  high,  banyans,  laurels,  rho- 
dodendra,  magnolias,  evergreen  oaks.  Thus  from 
zone  to  zone  of  steadily  changing  flora,  one  rises 
hour  by  hour. 

The  exuberant  jungle  life  of  the  lower  half  of 
the  ascent  beggars  description.  It  is  a  struggle 
for  life  between  vine  and  tree,  plant  and  parasite, 
in  which  each  is  victor ;  for  all  seems  to  triumph, 
and  nothing  to  die,  or,  if  it  does,  at  once  to  rise 
again  in  new  arboreal  resurrection  and  ascension. 
To  the  topmost  crest  of  the  giant  trees  climb  the 
enormous  vines,  mantling  the  trunks  with  their 
huge  leaves,  flinging  out  like  banners  their  spikes  or 
sprays  of  flowers,  leaping  across  to  seize  hold  of 
and  overrun  new  giants  or  sending  down  a  multitu- 
dinous rain  of  aerial  roots  to  seek  the  earth  again 
and  with  centripetal  force  begin  afresh  the  fight  of 
the  strangling  python  vines  with  the  mighty  forest 
Laocoon.  The  fable  of  Antaeus,  his  strength  born 
again  each  time  he  touched  his  mother  earth  —  here 


168  INDIA 

is  no  more  a  stale  literary  illustration.  In  the  tro- 
pics vine  and  tree  alike  have  learned  this  secret. 
Plants  are  there  which  begin  their  career  fifty  feet 
aloft  as  parasites.  Then  down  to  the  earth  they 
drop  their  aerial  roots,  fill  vein  and  artery  with  the 
fructifying  sap  that  steads  them  for  an  upward 
growth  of  limbs  and  crest,  till,  svirrounded  on  all 
sides,  the  parent  tree  dies,  rots,  vanishes  away,  and 
the  parasite  alone  is  left,  scaffolded  fifty  feet  high 
on  roots  from  whose  original  starting-point  aloft 
first  begins  the  trunk  and  limbs  of  the  now  victo- 
rious heir.  Perforce  one  sees  a  sly  vegetable  innu- 
endo at  certain  radicals  at  home,  so  bent  on  a  dis- 
play of  roots  as  to  dwarf  any  suggestion  of  foliage 
atop  to  correspond. 

Higher  up,  in  a  zone  from  three  to  five  thousand 
feet  in  elevation,  succeed  the  great  clearings  of  the 
tree  plantations,  terraced  step  on  step  in  gigantic 
flights  of  stairs  up  the  flanks  of  the  mountains ; 
though,  far  above  them,  begins  again  the  forest 
growth,  now  lai'gely  consisting  of  evergi'een  oaks, 
rhododendra,  and  magnolias.  Thus,  after  nearly 
six  hours  of  the  highest  wrought  delight,  we  had 
reached  the  point  at  which  was  to  open  upon  us, 
and  be  carried  with  us  to  the  end  of  the  ride,  the 
full  glories  of  the  Himalayas.  So  far  the  moun- 
tain we  had  been  slowly  climbing  had  lain  between 
us  and  them,  but  now  with  a  single  curve  all  was 
to  leap  in  sight. 

Alas !  if  ever  I  was  tempted  to  believe  in  the 
Prince  of  Evil  and  his  merciless  malignity,  now 
was  his  hour  of  triumph.     Up  along  the  flanks  of 


AGAIN  MONGOLIANS  169 

our  mountain  came  stealthily  climbing  the  ob- 
scuring mists.  Thicker  and  thicker  they  grew,  till 
we  were  immersed  in  them,  and  all  was  blotted 
out.  "  I  told  you  so !  I  told  you  so ! "  was  now 
the  mocking  voice  that  filled  the  air.  In  pessimis- 
tic love  had  a  dozen  kindly  friends  in  Calcutta 
prophesied  to  us  before  we  left,  "  You  will  have  a 
fatiguing  journey,  bury  your  heads  in  the  clouds, 
and  come  back  sadder,  even  if  wiser  men  about  the 
Himalayas."  That  such  people  should  live  and  be 
justified  in  the  end  seemed  the  insoluble  enigma 
of  mortal  life ! 

Well,  we  had  reached  Darjeeling,  and  had 
some  hours  of  daylight  to  spare.  Why  care 
for  snow  peaks  !  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
man !  Were  there  not  Nepalese,  Bhoteans,  Thibe- 
tans, in  crowds  to  study?  Were  we  not  on  the  con- 
fines of  mysterious  Thibet,  the  unriddled  country 
which,  though  it  will  let  no  man  in  — unless  he  can 
contrive  to  sew  up  his  eyelids  and  to  accumulate  on 
his  person  solid  stratifications  of  dirt  so  as  to  pass 
for  a  plausible  native  —  still  lets  many  of  its  people 
out?  We  had  struck  Mongolians  again.  In  vain 
had  we  fled  from  the  j)resence  of  the  mighty  yel- 
low race,  —  fled  from  it  in  Japan,  China,  the  Ma- 
lay Archipelago.  There  were  once  more  before  us 
the  flattened  face,  the  broad  cheek-bones,  the  nar- 
row, oblique  eyes,  the  black  stiff  hair,  the  peculiar 
tallowy  hue  of  this  vast  Asian  people.  Wonder 
ceases  at  the  careers  of  the  Attilas,  the  Ghengis 
Khans,  the  Tamerlanes,  with  such  countless  hordes 


170  INDIA 

to  draw  on.  So  swift  for  the  bazaar  we  steered,  to 
see,  while  daylight  lasted,  our  yellow  fellow-crea^ 
tures  and  their  baffling  alloys,  with  all  the  coin  of 
humanity  that  passes  current  among  these  Hima- 
layan hill  tribes. 

In  the  vast  migrations  to  and  fro  of  the  human 
race,  a  certain  strain  of  Tartar  blood  seems  to  have 
been  poured  into  the  veins  of  all  these  hill  tribe 
peoples.  Nepalese,  Bhoteans,  dwellers  in  Sikkim, 
though  they  have  had  beauty  enough  to  drown  out 
much  of  the  Tartar  ugliness,  still  —  great  numbers 
of  them  —  suggest  the  suspicion  that  somewhere 
back  there  was  a  Tartar  in  the  wood-pile.  Crowds 
of  the  people,  however,  were  pure,  unadulterated 
Thibetans,  ugly  enough  to  satisfy  the  claims  of  the 
portrait  the  Komans  drew  of  Attila.  Tartarus  !  no 
trouble  longer  about  the  origin  of  the  word.  No 
question,  either,  that  this  same  great  race  had 
a  hand  in  fashioning  our  Esquimaux  and  North 
American  Indians.  There  was  a  railroad  once 
across  Behring  Straits,  in  some  earlier  geologic 
epoch. 

From  a  religious  point  of  view,  these  Thi- 
betans offer  a  field  of  study,  if  not  spirit- 
ually elevating,  still  intensely  interesting.  His- 
torically, their  own  land  furnishes  the  most  ex- 
traordinary example  of  a  pure  theocracy  —  minus 
a  God,  but  with  no  end  of  devils  —  existing  in  the 
world.  King,  priest,  magistrate,  tax-gatherer, 
doctor,  executioner,  every  function  is  exercised  by 
a  lama,   the   generic   name   of    priest   or    monk. 


THE  APOTHEOSIS   OF  MACHINERY     171 

Strange  to  say,  the  people  are  all  Bucldhists ;  and 
among  tliem  the  great  Indian  Buddha  had  a  sec- 
ond incarnation.  Most  certainly  he  needed  it,  to 
get  rid  of  his  pr-evious  conceptions ;  for  in  his 
second  incarnation  he  had  abandoned  every  trace 
of  inwardness,  and  surrendered  himself,  root  and 
branch,  to  sheer  externalism.  Of  all  the  heels- 
over -head  travesties  of  the  whirligig  of  time, 
surely  Thibetan  Buddhism  is  the  oddest.  Now 
first  I  came  in  contact  with  literal,  unadulterated 
machine-praying.  Long  before,  I  had  thought  to 
encounter  this  strange  phenomenon  in  certain 
clergymen  at  home  ;  but  always,  with  them,  the 
machine  was  the  man  himself.  Here,  however, 
the  machine  was  wholly  extra-human,  —  a  small 
copper  cylinder,  internally  filled  with  yards  of 
rolled-up  prayers,  revolving  on  an  uj^right  handle. 
It  goes  with  the  speed  of  a  top.  Indeed,  the 
devout  Oxford  clergyman  whose  standing  bet  it 
was  that  he  could  give  any  other  man  in  England 
to  Pontius  Pilate  and  then  beat  him  through  the 
service,  here  would  have  found  Othello's  occujja- 
tion  gone.  Every  revolution  is  the  whole  service, 
liturgy  and  Athanasian  creed  included  ;  and  the 
revolutions  are  two  hundred  a  minute.  And  yet 
these  little  cylinders,  plentiful  as  rattles  in  babies' 
hands,  were  for  private  devotions  only.  In  the 
temples  we  saw  them  three  feet  high  and  eighteen 
inches  in  diameter,  capable  of  holding  miles  of 
prayers,  and  run  by  the  hoixr  by  man-power. 
Water-power  is  often  substituted  where  a  fall  can 
be   secured,  and   is   just  as  efficacious.     In  fact, 


172  INDIA 

the  very  winds  are  subsidized  for  devotions,  as  in 
Holland  for  windmills  to  grind  the  corn.  From 
thousands  of  poles  flutter  long  streamers  on  which 
the  prayers  are  written,  and  every  flutter  says 
them  all.  In  our  own  boasted  land,  we  have  but 
begun  to  grasp  the  higher  aj)plications  of  machin- 
ery. 

In  previous  chapters  I  may  have  seemed  some- 
what unjust  in  my  strictures  on  the  lack  of  in- 
wardness and  the  tendency  to  ceremonialism  of 
the  whole  Mongol-Malay  race,  from  Japan  in  the 
north  to  the  Malay  Archipelago  in  the  south.  I 
felt  it  by  instinct  three  days  after  I  was  in  Japan. 
I  was  utterly  oppressed  by  it  in  China,  where 
government,  manners,  education,  literature,  are  one 
great  outward  web  of  ceremony  divorced  from 
inward  organic  life.  And  now,  in  my  next  en- 
counter with  this  self-same  Mongol  race,  I  had 
found  the  whole  thing  gone  to  seed,  —  dry  hay 
for  succulent  grass ;  not  so  much  as  lip-service, 
only  machine  service,  for  the  devout  overflow  of 
the  heart.  By  ceremonialism  I  mean  simply  the 
divorce  between  expression  and  impression,  the 
parrot-like  repetition  of  conventional  formulae  sub- 
stituted for  the  living  man.  Symbolism,  on  the 
contrary  —  symbolism  raised  to  the  pitch  of  de- 
lirium —  is  the  root  religious  vice  of  India ;  and 
soon  in  Benares  on  the  sacred  Ganges  shall  we  see 
it  displayed  in  its  most  luxuriant  jungle  growth. 
But,  of  the  two,  the  emaciated,  trance-struck  fakir 
is  more  attractive  than  the  machine-twirling  Bud- 
dhist of  Thibet. 


A  LAMA'S   WIFE  173 

Fain  would  I  describe  an  introduction  we  were 
favored  with  to  a  lama  and  liis  wife.  Such  a 
jolly  personality,  she,  and  such  a  living  illustration 
of  the  line,  "  Religion  never  was  designed  to  make 
our  pleasures  less  "  !  On  her  head  she  wore  a 
crown  of  red  coral  set  with  big  unpolished  tur- 
quoises, while  her  cheeks  were  smeared  with  pig's 
blood,  —  a  rouge  which  certainly  effects  its  pur- 
pose. The  face  loomed  round  as  a  full  moon  ris- 
ing red  in  a  smoky  autiunn  horizon ;  and  as  her 
religion  entitled  her  spouse  and  herself  to  one 
tenth  of  the  income  of  the  flock,  she  evidently  felt 
it  a  fitting  outcome  of  the  second  incarnation  of  the 
Buddha  in  Thibet.  Not  yet  had  she  experienced 
the  depressing  effect  of  what  in  New  England  is 
called  the  "  decrease  in  reverence  for  the  clergy." 
Should  her  husband  die,  a  fierce  contest  would 
ensue  among  his  devout  followers  for  a  hair  of  his 
head,  a  paring  of  his  fingernails,  to  wear  as  a 
charm  in  an  amulet,  or  for  one  or  the  other  of  his 
thigh  bones  to  make  a  horn  of,  through  which  to 
blow  the  praises  of  the  faith.  Alas !  as  I  thought 
in  contrast  of  many  a  sweet,  patient  minister's 
wife  in  Massachusetts,  nagged  by  cross-grained 
parishioners  I  could  not  but  exclaim,  "  How 
blessed  thy  lot,  O  woman !  "  Not  a  female  in  her 
parish  advanced  enough  to  begrudge  her  her  coral 
crown  set  with  turquoises,  or  even  so  much  as  to 
raise  the  question  whether  she  were  not  a  trifle 
too  extravagant  in  the  use  of  pig's  blood  on  her 
cheeks ! 


174  INDIA 

The  clouds  and  mist  that  had  prevailed  on 
oiii'  arrival  in  Darjeeling  continued  on 
through  the  afternoon  and  evening,  and  we  went 
to  bed  sadly  impressed  with  the  fickle  and  moody 
temper  of  mountain  ranges.  Orders  were  left, 
however,  that  should  the  sky  be  clear  we  should 
be  called  half  an  hour  before  sunrise.  Half  an 
hour  before  sunrise  there  came  a  tap  at  our  door 
on  the  ground  floor  of  the  hotel,  and  we  knew  the 
day  was  saved.  Swift  was  our  response ;  for  it 
was  the  Himalayas  calling  us,  and  not  Ameer,  our 
servant.  So,  jumping  at  once  into  warm  clothing 
and  each  swallowing  a  hot  cup  of  tea  (always  in 
India  brought  to  one's  bedside  on  awakening),  we 
stepped  out  on  the  broad  terrace  in  front  of  the 
hotel. 

The  terrace  stood  on  the  steep  flank  of  a 
mountain  higher  than  the  top  of  Mt.  Washington, 
the  mountain  itself  dipping  down  into  a  pro- 
found valley  beneath,  but  one  abyss  in  a  billowy 
ocean  of  like  mountains.  All  below  was  in  im- 
penetrable darkness,  through  which  no  distinct 
object  could  be  made  out ;  but  over  across  the 
abyss,  and  seemingly  floating  on  the  ujjper  sky, 
stood  —  hung  rather  —  the  snow-white  peaks  of 
Kinchinjanga  (next  to  Everest  the  highest  moun- 
tain in  the  world),  dominating  the  colossal  group 
of  five  called  The  Treasuries  of  the  Snow.  The 
white  at  first  was  of  an  almost  spectral  sheen, 
lucent,  yet  etherealized ;  and  the  elevation  at 
which,  perfectly  defined,  it  hung  above  the  vast 
lower  darkness  filled  the  mind  with  a  sense  of  awe 


THE  HIMALAYAS  175 

as  before  a  spectacle  wholly  detached  from  the 
earth.  Then  the  summit  of  Kiuchinjanga  began 
to  flush  with  rosy  light,  the  flush  gradually  de- 
scending till  it  touched  the  tops  of  all  five  sister 
peaks.  And  now  ensued  the  beatific  vision  of 
God's  glory.  To  right  and  left,  over  a  circle  of 
nearly  ninety  degrees,  peak  after  peak  began  to 
flame,  the  lowest  at  an  altitude  of  over  twenty 
thousand  feet,  while  still  the  darkness  lingered  on 
in  the  whole  nether  world.  Often  as  the  compari- 
son has  been  made  between  the  great  discover- 
ers, poets,  and  prophets  of  the  ages  —  the  New- 
tons,  Dantes,  Isaiahs  —  and  the  supreme  mountain 
peaks  heralding  the  advent  of  the  sun  while  yet 
the  rest  of  the  \vorld  is  wrapped  in  darkness,  never 
before  did  I  so  feel  its  solemnity.  How  long,  how 
long,  did  these  mighty  monarchs  keep  solely  to 
themselves  their  light  and  glow,  or  but  sympathet- 
ically share  it  with  one  another's  kindred  spirits, 
before  the  broadening  illumination  spread  over  the 
foothills  and  penetrated  down  into  the  valleys ! 
But  at  last  it  reached  them,  dj^eing  in  rich  maroon 
the  vast  rollin2:  sea  of  the  inferior  iuterveninof 
mountains.  When  it  is  recalled  that  Kinchinjanga 
is  over  twenty-eight  thousand  feet  high,  and  the 
group  it  dominates  twenty-five  thousand,  it  readily 
can  be  conceived  that  nowhere  else  on  the  globe 
can  this  sublime  phenomenon  so  impress  the  im- 
agination. In  the  presence  of  so  grand  a  specta- 
cle, time  loses  its  petty  finite  measures ;  minutes 
assume  the  character  of  slow-moving  secular  dura- 
tions.    One  holds  his  breath  in  awe  at  the  sense  of 


176  INDIA 

how  long"  before  the  earth  beneath  has  broken  Its 
sleep  of  night,  these  glorious  heralds  of  the  clay 
have  seen  and  greeted  with  their  jubilees  the  far- 
away rising  of  the  sun. 

We  could  not  linger,  however,  too  long  on 
the  terrace,  for,  to  profit  to  the  fullest  by 
the  early  hours  of  the  morning,  we  were  to  ascend 
fifteen  hundred  feet  higher  to  the  top  of  Tiger 
Hill,  from  which  Mt.  Everest  would  be  oj)ened  up. 
Chairs  were  waiting  for  us,  each  with  six  Thi- 
betan coolies,  four  for  constant  service  and  two 
for  reliefs.  Soon  we  were  on  their  shoulders, 
moving  at  a  swift  and  steady  pace.  Admirable 
mountaineers,  accustomed  to  carry  heavy  burdens 
over  the  Himalayan  passes,  the  lowest  of  them  at 
an  elevation  of  fifteen  thousand  feet,  they  made 
light  work  of  us.  Of  all  the  luxurious  methods 
of  steadily  surmounting  heights  and  at  the  same 
time  drinking  in  the  prospect,  commend  me  to  the 
chair  on  the  shoulders  of  four  sure-footed  carriers. 
The  mind  is  disengaged  and  free.  No  more  al- 
ternation between  longing  to  abandon  one's  self 
to  the  glory  of  the  transcendent  scenery  and  the 
fear  of  spraining  an  ankle  or  breaking  one's 
neck. 

The  path  wound  along  the  flank  of  Tiger  Hill, 
through  woods  of  magnolias,  laurels,  rhododendra, 
and  evergreen  oaks,  with  constant  vistas  of  the 
wliole  Himalayan  range.  Arrived  at  Senchal,  the 
abandoned  site  of  an  old  military  cantonment,  Mt. 
Everest  had  already  loomed  up  in  the  far  distance. 


THE  HIMALAYAS  111 

while  at  the  summit  of  Tiger  Hill  we  enjoyed  the 
delight  of  distinctly  making  out  all  three  peaks  of 
this  highest  mountain  on  the  globe.  Twenty-nine 
thousand  and  two  feet  I  For  round  luimbers  the 
two  might  have  been  spared,  but  who  would  belittle 
such  an  altitude  by  subtracting  an  inch  ?  The 
three  clustered  peaks  were  over  a  hundred  miles 
away,  though  so  clear  was  the  atmosphere  that  they 
stood  out  in  perfect  distinctness.  Anyhow,  we 
had  seen  Mt.  Everest,  and  so  in  all  after  life  could 
use  it  as  an  all-round-the-world  club  to  beat  down 
the  pride  of  any  who  should  presume  to  boast  of 
Mt.  Blanc  in  our  majestic  presence. 

None  the  less,  the  real  glory  of  the  scene  lay  in 
the  stupendous  Kinchinjanga  group.  It,  too,  was 
forty-five  miles  away,  though  it  seemed  but  ten. 
Indeed,  on  first  getting  into  the  presence  of  the 
Himalayas,  one  has  to  go  through  a  fairly  revolu- 
tionary mental  process  in  grasping  the  propoi'tions 
of  things.  A  mountain,  in  the  foreground,  twice 
the  height  of  Mt.  Washington,  is  only  an  insig- 
nificant foothill.  It  has  still  three  thousand  feet 
to  grow  before  reaching  the  level  of  the  snow-line, 
and  then,  to  become  a  peer  of  the  great  ones, 
would  have  to  add  from  nine  to  thirteen  thousand 
feet  of  snow.  Mountains,  in  sight,  over  twenty- 
two  thousand  feet  in  height  are  thick  as  trees  in 
the  woods.  Thus,  for  an  ordinary  mortal,  it  is  no 
small  feat  to  evolve  a  mind  to  match  the  moun- 
tains. Notwithstanding  the  educational  advan- 
tages we  started  with,  it  took  my  friend  and  me 
fully  twenty-four  hours  to  do  it. 


178  INDIA 

Comijarisons,  it  is  said,  are  odious.  That 
depends.  If  the  object  of  the  comparison 
be  light,  and  not  heat,  it  is  often  a  very  helpful 
thing.  Therefore,  in  comparing,  for  example,  the 
Alps  with  the  Himalayas,  one  would  have  to  admit 
freely  that  the  Alps,  with  their  emerald  green  up- 
land pastures  contrasted  with  their  snow-crowned 
domes  and  peaks,  are  far  more  beautiful.  This 
grows  partly  from  the  fact  that  they  are  so  much 
more  easily  manageable  by  mind  and  imagination, 
and  do  not  so  tensely  stretch  the  mental  tether. 
The  Himalf.yas,  so  to  speak,  make  an  immense  de- 
mand on  the  intellectual  as  well  as  the  testhetic 
imagination. 

To  grasp  any  adequate  idea  of  their  magnitude, 
the  mind  must  expand  to  the  conception  that  they 
are  in  reality  two  colossal  ranges,  the  one  fifty  miles 
behind  the  other,  and  that  in  the  continental  abysses 
of  the  valleys  between  them  are  gathered  the  wa- 
ters of  the  mighty  Indus  and  the  Brahmapootra, 
the  first  flowing  round  by  their  western  flanks  and 
the  second  by  their  eastern,  to  enter  India,  while 
all  along  down  their  southern  slopes  stream  the 
thousand  affluents  of  the  Ganges.  Then,  to  com- 
plete the  picture,  imagination  must  evoke  the  lim- 
itless expanse  of  the  vast  South  Pacific  Ocean, 
the  feeder  of  the  ever-renewed  treasuries  of  their 
snows.  For  the  six  months  of  sunnner,  the  steadily 
blowing  southeast  monsoon  conveys  the  enormous 
evaporation  of  snch  an  ocean  under  the  full  blaze 
of  a  tropical  sun,  —  an  evaporation  pouring  down 
in  deluges  of  rain  on  the  plains,  and  falling  in  per- 


THE  ALPS  AND   THE  HIMALAYAS     179 

petual  snow  as  it  strikes  the  frozen  elevations  of 
the  mountains.  Easily,  then,  will  it  be  seen  in 
contrast  that,  to  form  an  adequate  conception  of 
the  Alps,  alike  of  their  beauty  and  their  structure, 
no  such  immense  demand  is  made  on  the  powers. 
Further,  among  the  Alps  the  eye  takes  in  at  a 
single  glance  an  infinity  of  beautiful  detail.  It 
revels  in  the  emerald  sheen  of  the  velvety  upland 
pastures,  and  is  transported  with  the  amethystine 
blue  of  the  glacial  ice.  It  follows  with  charm  the 
exquisite  outlines  of  the  snow-crowned  Jungfrau 
and  Silberhorn,  or  commands,  far  below,  the  poetic 
beauty  of  the  Lauterbrunnen  valley.  No  such 
thing  as  this  is  possible  among  the  Himalayas.  It 
would  demand  a  telescopic  eye. 

Further  back,  I  spoke  of  the  necessity  of  evolv- 
ing a  mind  to  match  the  moimtains.  This  holds 
true  whether  the  mountains  be  Alps  or  Himalayas. 
And  yet,  to  achieve  a  consummation  so  devoutly  to 
be  wished,  I  know  of  no  so  feasible  way  as  to  sup- 
ply a  Raphael  or  Mozart  to  voice  the  gracious 
beauty  of  the  Aljjs,  a  Michelangelo  or  Beethoven 
to  interpret  the  overi^owering  sublimity  of  the 
Himalayas.  And  yet,  as  the  whole  day  long  the 
same  crystal  purity  of  the  atmosphere  continued  to 
prevail,  and  as  on  the  following  morning  the  same 
miracle  of  a  sunrise  was  reiDeated,  we  could  not 
but  feel  that  two  humble  mortals  at  least  had 
added  many  a  cubit  to  their  aesthetic  and  geologic 
stature.  A  stupendous  sensation,  constituting  a 
veritable  epoch  in  our  lives,  had  we  enjoyed. 


II. 


Calcutta,  the  English  part  of  it,  is  a  bril- 
liant European  capital,  with  immensely  pic- 
turesque Asiatic  adjuncts.  Its  enormous  parks  and 
stately  avenues  for  riding  and  driving  at  once  call 
to  mind  London,  yet  suggest  a  striking  troj^ical 
contrast.  Instead  of  elms  and  oaks,  the  trees  are 
palms,  banyans,  bho-trees,  tamarinds ;  and  instead 
of  red-faced,  ijlush-clad  John  Bull  coachmen  and 
footmen,  the  drivers  of  the  handsome  private  car- 
riages are  dark-skinned  Hindus,  in  dress  a  splendid 
conflagration  of  scarlet  and  gold,  before  which  even 
the  flaming  poinsettias  and  bourgainvillia  vines 
pale  their  ineffectual  fires.  How  infinitely  becom- 
ing a  scarlet  and  gold  turban  to  a  finely  chiseled, 
well-nigh  black  face  !  Indeed,  the  English  ladies 
and  gentlemen  within  the  carriages  would  hardly 
subject  themselves  to  such  a  contrast  if  they  knew 
it  to  be  so  aesthetically  damaging.  How  anaemic 
and  bleached  out  they  look,  as  though  they  had 
grown  in  cellars !  And  yet  how  assuredly  they  look 
the  real  lords  and  masters !  At  a  glance  is  read 
their  superior  force  of  body  and  mind,  their  cour- 
age, imperial  might  of  will.  A  lion  among  a  herd 
of  timid  deer  could  not  more  emphasize  the  fact. 
Clive's  victory  at  Plassey,  —  it  is  here  explained  in 
a  flash.     Then  look  out  to  the  right  or  left  across 


CALCUTTA  181 

the  park.  Here  a  game  of  cricket  is  going  on, 
here  one  of  golf,  here  one  of  polo.  The  English- 
man is  keeping  up  his  muscle.  Inevitably,  comes 
to  mind  Wellington's  saying  that  AYaterloo  was 
won  on  the  foot-ball  field  at  Eton. 

Yes,  one  is  in  Bengal.  The  streets  swarm  with 
the  motley  colored  population.  Ten  men  dart  to 
pick  up  your  handkerchief,  should  you  chance  to 
drop  it ;  a  dozen  to  open  the  carriage  door,  should 
you  chance  to  stop.  Meanwhile,  fifty  are  elbowing 
one  another  to  sell  you  something.  Five  are  sure 
you  want  a  barber ;  ten,  you  want  a  pen-knife  ;  all 
the  rest,  that  you  want  photographs,  flowers,  a  hand- 
mirror,  a  pair  of  embroidered  slippers,  a  model  of 
a  temple,  a  scarf-pin.  From  the  swarms  that  unite 
their  frantic  efforts  to  heave  up  the  steps  of  the 
hotel  your  traveling  bag,  —  in  weight,  perhaps,  six 
pounds,  —  and  then  individually  apply  for  a  money 
recognition  of  their  exhausting  toil,  you  would 
think  yourself  present  at  the  transportation  of  a 
colossal  Egyptian  sphinx  from  the  quarries  of  the 
Lower  Cataract  to  far-away  Memphis.  Up  to  your 
very  bedroom  they  stream,  each  salaaming  as  before 
a  Mogul  emperor.  What  exuberant  tropical  imag- 
inations, in  the  glamour  of  which  the  naked  fact 
that  they  actually  got  within  six  feet  of  the  hand- 
bag is  glorified  into  an  eternal  obligation  of  reward! 
You  wax  angry,  and  order  them  out  of  the  room. 
Still  more  profound  the  obeisances.  rAt  last  the 
Tamerlane  begins  to  rise  Avithin  you,  as  you  snatch 
a  trunk-strap  and  feel  like  lashing  the  "  pampered 
jades  of  Asia."     Finally,  you  effect  a  deliverance, 


182  INDIA 

and  slam  the  door  in  their  faces.  With  what  beau- 
tiful Oriental  patience  do  they  wait  outside  I  Time 
is  an  illusion  of  the  senses  which  has  no  objective 
existence  to  the  Indian  mind.  Are  we  not  ever 
sunk  in  the  immutable  and  eternal  ?  You  emerge 
from  the  apartment,  and  there  they  are !  Now,  for 
the  first  time,  you  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  Parable 
of  the  Unjust  Judge,  who  feared  not  God,  neither 
regarded  man,  but  had  to  give  in  none  the  less  to 
the  persistent  clamor  of  the  widow.  Had  he  been 
the  whole  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
Chief  Justice  Marshal  included,  you  would  not 
have  the  heart  to  blame  him. 

I  dwell  on  incidents  like  these  because  from 
the  outset  they  are  needful  for  any  vivid 
interpretation  of  India.  Human  life  here  is  ant- 
cheap,  if  not  dirt-chea]3.  Go  into  the  dining-room 
of  the  hotel  —  each  guest  has  his  private  servant 
behind  his  chair.  Walk  through  the  passage-ways 
of  the  hotel  after  bedtime  —  a  servant  is  sleeping 
on  a  mat  before  each  door.  A  clap  of  the  hands 
inside,  and  in  a  second  he  is  on  his  feet.  Self-help 
soon  ceases  to  be  so  much  as  a  reminiscence.  Here 
am  I,  a  man  who,  in  democratic  America,  has  been 
wont  to  tend  his  own  furnace,  and  in  all  grave  do- 
mestic crises  to  stand  ready  to  act  as  second  girl ; 
but  in  India  it  is  a  struggle  to  be  allowed  to  tie  my 
own  shoestrings  or  brush  my  own  teeth.  A  knock 
at  the  door  in  the  morning,  and  tea  and  toast  are 
brought  to  my  bedside,  the  bath  is  pronounced 
ready,  and  with  difficulty,  after  falling  back  upon 


HINDU    TRAITS  183 

the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  proclaiming 
that  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal  to  handling  a 
towel,  am  I  then  permitted  to  dry  my  own  skin. 
I  am  getting  demoralized.  India  is  steadily  under- 
mining my  manhood,  emasculating  my  will,  as  she 
did  with  the  early  Aryans,  the  Moguls,  the  Afghans. 
Soon  I  shall  not  so  much  as  know  the  meaning  of 
a  shoe-brush,  a  furnace,  a  second  girl.  Sunk  in  ef- 
feminacy, I  shall  hand  over  all  the  affairs  of  state 
to  my  slaves  and  eunuchs.  Then  a  fresh  irruption 
will  break  in  from  the  barbarous,  hardy  north ;  and 
a  new  Afghan  or  Mogul  dynasty  will  be  founded 
on  my  ruins.  Thus,  in  the  disintegrating  effect 
wrought  on  one's  own  personality  does  a  man  soon 
get  all  the  needful  historical  data  for  the  interj)re- 
tation  of  the  century-long  story  of  India.  A  week's 
experience  of  such  demoralization  is  more  edifying 
than  reading  whole  volumes  of  history.  One  be- 
comes history.     De  tefahula  narratur. 

With  such  a  teeming  population  as  that  of 
Bengal,  millions  of  families  of  six  living  on 
a  wage  of  fifty  cents  a  week,  utter  subserviency  of 
body  and  mind,  evincing  itself  in  abject  prostration 
before  man  and  the  gods,  is  what  must  be  looked 
for.  The  way  to  favor  with  the  strong  has  always 
been  groveling  in  the  dust  before  them,  and  the 
strong  on  earth  and  the  strong  in  heaven  are  one  and 
the  same  to  the  Hindu  mind.  Hence  the  rankest 
jungle  growth  of  superstitions  ;  hence  religious  rites 
among  the  lower  orders  so  hideously  obscene  that 
one  could  hardly  fathom  how  they  could  have  origi- 


184  INDIA 

iiated  but  by  recalling  how  hideously  obscene  were 
the  lives  of  the  eartlily  rulers  these  poor  grovelers 
worshiped  as  their  sole  ideals  of  might  and  glory. 
The  painted  brothels  of  Pompeii  are  shrines  of 
purity  alongside  the  orgies  of  lust  portrayed  in  the 
carvings  of  many  a  Hindu  temple.  The  apotheosis 
of  a  beast,  animal  or  human,  —  of  a  cobra,  a 
jackal,  a  foul  and  bloodthirsty  tyrant,  —  one  per- 
fectly comprehends  it  now.  And  yet  among  the 
higher  classes  of  the  Indians  are  encountered  men 
of  the  loftiest  and  purest  theistic  faith,  men  at  once 
of  the  rarest  munificence  of  charitable  action  and 
of  the  devoutest  spirit  of  contemplation.  And  the 
range  of  such  characters  is  constantly  growing, 
as  familiarity  with  Western  thought  and  organized 
charity  spreads  more  widely,  and  supplements  the 
overpowering  tendency  of  the  Indian  mind  to  ab- 
straction from  all  terrestrial  interests. 

How  overpowering  this  tendency  still  remains  is 
even  to-day  attested  in  acts  that  strike  the  Occiden- 
tal mind  with  wonder.  In  Calcutta,  in  any  of  the 
great  cities  of  India,  it  is  no  unusual  incident  to 
see  a  man  who  has  made  himself  a  millionaire  be- 
coming by  the  age  of  fifty  so  utterly  world-weary, 
so  tired  with  all  the  fret  of  the  finite,  as  to  throw 
up  business,  make  over  his  property  to  his  children, 
and  himself  wander  forth  naked  but  for  a  loin- 
cloth, a  staff  in  his  hand,  and  a  beggar's  bowl  at 
his  girdle,  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  days  in  the  for- 
est in  the  contemplation  of  the  infinite.  Think,  in 
contrast,  of  the  consternation  on  Wall  Street,  had 
it  suddenly  been  announced  in  the  "  Herald "  or 


HINDU   TRAITS  185 

"  Tribune  "  that  Jay  Gould,  weary  of  the  long  fret 
of  the  finite  involved  in  wrecking  railroads,  had 
thrown  up  his  millions  and  started  out,  a  naked 
mendicant,  to  devote  what  remained  of  his  life  to 
absorption  in  the  Absolute.  Bloomingdale  Asylum ! 
would  have  been  the  exclamation  on  every  lip. 
And  yet,  in  any  higher  sense  of  the  word,  which  of 
the  two  were  the  saner  seems  hardly  open  to  ques- 
tion, —  certainly  it  would  not  be  in  India. 


III. 


Our  first  objective  point  on  leaving  Cal- 
cutta was  Benares,  on  the  banks  of  the  sacred 
Ganges.  It  lies  some  four  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
away,  in  a  northwesterly  direction,  the  holiest  city 
in  India  to  the  Hindus,  as  formerly  to  the  Buddhists. 
Hither,  five  centuries  and  more  before  the  Christian 
era,  came  Sakya  Muni,  after  receiving  his  illumi- 
nation under  the  bho-tree  in  Gaya,  to  preach  the 
new  faith  in  the  very  Jerusalem  of  Brahmanism. 
Buddhism  passed  away  long  centuries  ago,  and  not 
a  shrine  remains  in  the  city  as  a  relic  of  its  former 
power.  But  still  Benares  keeps  on  the  Mecca  of 
the  Hindus.  In  vain  the  Moslems  destroyed  it  in 
1194,  razing  to  the  ground  one  thousand  temples 
and  building  mosques  in  their  place.  The  faith 
or  superstition  of  the  people  proved  too  strong. 
For  Benares  was  the  city  of  the  sacred  Ganges,  the 
threefold  divine  river  that  runs  through  heaven, 
hell,  and  earth.  To  die  on  its  banks,  to  have  one's 
ashes  cast  upon  its  waters,  was  the  highway  to  the 
realms  of  peace.  A  thousand  miles,  barefoot,  hun- 
gry, and  sleeping  by  the  roadside,  will  the  poorest 
peasants  travel  to  bathe  in  its  flood  and  drink  its 
water.  Troops  of  them  —  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren —  one  constantly  meets,  journeying  toward  the 
holy  city,  or  returning  home  with  vessels  filled  at 


BENARES  187 

its  sacred  stream.  To  it  are  the  feeble  and  dying 
carried,  that  they  may  pass  away  on  its  banks  ;  and 
even,  if  too  far  inland  for  the  journey,  a  portion  of 
the  body  is  sent  to  be  burned  to  ashes  and  thrown 
on  its  swelling-  flood. 

As  a  result  of  this  faith,  innumerable  temples 
stretch  for  miles  along  the  river  side.  From  the 
elevation  on  which  they  stand  descend  superb 
flights  of  stone  steps,  called  ghats,  hundreds  of  feet 
broad  and  fifty  feet  in  length,  to  the  river  brink. 
Along  with  the  temples  are  solid  palaces,  con- 
structed by  princes  of  the  different  provinces,  in 
which  they  or  the  members  of  their  households  may 
await  the  hour  of  death,  while  multitudes  of  poorer 
people  lie  tossing  under  the  blazing  sun  till  their 
lingering  diseases  quit  their  hold  and  the  supreme 
hour  of  life's  privilege  arrives. 

Strange,  indeed,  is  the  spectacle,  as  one 
elbows  and  squeezes  his  way  through  the 
narrow,  crowded  streets  among  the  temples.  The 
countless  pilgrims,  arrayed  in  their  holiday  attire, 
light  up  the  scene  with  the  tropical  splendor  of  a 
flower  garden.  As  each  temple  is  an  infallible  cure 
for  some  specific  disease,  or  of  atonement  for  some 
form  of  ceremonial  sin,  a  regular  round  of  visitation 
is  prescribed  ;  and,  besides,  the  greedy  Brahman 
priests  in  each  must  get  their  share  of  the  spoils. 
What  a  sight  to  watch  the  crowds  around  the  holy 
well,  gulping  down  great  draughts  of  the  nasty, 
sacred  liquid !  As  immense  masses  of  flowers  are 
thrown  in  as  votive  offerings,  to  ferment  and  rot 


188  INDIA 

there,  the  water  has  the  consistency  and  smell  of 
a  thick,  fetid  vegetable  soup.  Chemically  analyzed, 
the  formula  would  be  one  third  dysentery,  one 
third  diphtheria,  and  one  third  cholera,  with  a  trace 
of  water.  Indeed,  could  certain  holy  wells  like  this 
and  the  one  at  Mecca  be  put  in  charge  of  a  duly 
qualified  Sanitary  Deity,  in  the  opinion  of  physi- 
cians the  scourge  of  cholera  might  be  stamj)ed  out. 
And  yet,  to  the  entranced  devotees,  the  nectar  of 
the  gods  could  not  furnish  a  more  delicious  draught. 
Such  a  triumph  of  faith  over  eye  and  nose  could 
hardly  be  credited  till  seen  in  practical  operation. 

Meanwhile  the  gay-colored  crowds  are  swarming 
through  the  narrow  streets.  Slow  is  one's  pro- 
gress at  best,  but  the  struggle  is  rendered  tenfold 
harder  by  the  large  number  of  sacred  cows  that  are 
meandering  round  at  their  own  sweet  will.  Like 
all  unduly  privileged  religious  beings,  —  whether 
popes,  grand  lamas,  fakirs,  or  venerated  monkeys, 
—  these  cows  take  on  insufferable  airs  of  pre- 
scriptive sanctity.  Ordinary  human  piety  and 
humility  are  as  nothing  in  their  supernal  sight. 
Now,  undulating  sideways  and  on  the  full  trot, 
comes  one  of  them,  straight  down  the  narrow, 
densely  packed  street.  Eight  and  left  fall  back 
the  jnlgrims,  pressing  into  open  doorways,  jammed 
against  walls,  or  knocked  down  and  run  over,  as 
may  be.  Anyhow,  the  cow  gets  through,  which  is  all 
she  cares  for.  Then,  a  second  sacred  cow  is  seized, 
this  time  with  a  contemplative  fit.  Evidently,  she 
is  mastered  by  an  impulse  to  meditate  the  Abso- 
lute, as  straight  across    the   narrow  street,  seven 


THE   GHATS  189 

feet  wide,  she  plants  herself,  —  a  sacred  dam,  heap- 
ing up  the  great  human  current.  How  the  pro- 
fane mind  yearns  to  twist  her  holy  tail !  But 
to  do  so  would  mean  to  get  one's  own  neck  in- 
continently twisted.  There  is  but  one  course,  — 
patiently  to  wait  till  her  mood  of  contemplative 
abstraction  is  over,  —  miless,  perhaps,  some  devotee 
can  divert  her  mind  to  earthly  considerations  by 
tempting  her  with  a  sacred  cake  from  a  temple, 
and  so  luring  her  round  lengthwise  to  the  street. 

An  hour  or  two  at  a  time  of  this  seething 
caldron  of  humanity  is  as  much  as  any 
ordinary  mortal,  however  interested  in  his  species, 
can  endure.  So,  working  liis  way  out  of  the  press, 
he  at  last  reaches  the  river-bank,  and  hires  a  boat. 
All !  the  relief  to  enjoy  fi-ee  elbow  room  and  drink 
in  a  fresh  breath  of  dehumanized  air  I  It  is  a  mar- 
velous spectacle  now  before  the  eyes,  as  one  rows 
along  the  ghats.  For  miles  stretch  the  profusely 
carved  towers  of  the  temples  and  the  lines  of  solid 
structures  in  which  the  richer  pilgrims  await  the 
glad  summons  of  death.  Here  and  there  are 
massive  piles  of  ruins,  attesting  the  power  of  the 
Ganges  floods  to  undermine  and  topple  down  the 
heaviest  masonry.  Though  niarvelousl}^  picturesque 
from  a  distance,  seen  close  to  all  wears  a  dilapidated 
look,  with  the  exception  of  the  superb  stairways  of 
the  ghats  themselves.  On  these  are  gathered  thou- 
sands on  thousands  of  devotees  in  holiday  attire,  — 
a  splendor  of  color  in  the  brilliant  sunshine  such  as 
it  is  rarely  given  a  mortal  to  see.     Down  to  the 


190  INDIA 

river-bank  they  stream,  throwing  over  themselves 
ample  white,  sheet-like  coverings,  from  under  which 
they  slip  off  their  gayer  clothes.  Then  they  wade 
into  the  heavenly  polluted  stream.  How  they 
plunge  under  the  surface  a,gain  and  again !  How 
they  drink  great  double  handfuls  of  the  nauseous 
water,  thick  with  the  ashes  of  the  funeral  pyres! 
Too  much  of  it  outside  and  inside,  they  cannot 
absorb.  Then,  with  what  radiant  faces  do  they 
emerge  from  the  holy  flood,  —  tottering  old  women, 
happy  husbands  and  wives,  laughing  children  ! 
They  will  talk  of  this  hour  to  their  dying  day,  in 
villages  a  thousand  miles  away. 

Meanwhile,  on  great  bare  spaces  between 
the  ghats,  is  going  on  the  perpetual  burn- 
ing of  the  dead,  the  real  euthanasia  of  the  favored 
of  Krishna.  At  the  sides  stand  enormous  piles 
of  wood,  while  into  the  open  spaces  between  them 
are  borne,  on  bamboo  poles  and  wrapped  in 
sheets,  the  bodies  to  be  burned.  For  a  while,  for 
full  baptism,  the  body  is  left  immersed  in  the 
river,  while  the  relatives  are  driving  a  cruel  bar- 
gain with  the  sacerdotal  wood-sellers  and  the 
especial  sanctified  wretch  who  has  a  monopoly  of 
the  sacred  fire.  Some  have  died  rich  enough  to 
afford  a  cord  of  wood  for  the  pyre,  some  a  half- 
cord,  some  only  a  quarter.  No  matter.  To  all 
alike  it  means  floating  down  the  earthly  river  to 
where  it  joins  the  heavenly.  The  bargain  struck, 
the  wood  is  built  up  into  a  pyre,  the  body  laid  on 
it,  more  wood  heaped  on  top,  bits  of  sandal-wood 


BURNING  THE  DEAD  191 

thrown  on  for  perfume,  oil  poured  upon  the  whole, 
the  sacred  fire  applied,  and  up  leap  the  flames  into 
the  air.  All  around,  like  so  many  crows,  perch 
on  walls  and  pediments  the  troops  of  mourners  ; 
and,  while  their  special  pyre  is  burning,  the  ashes 
of  a  dozen  extinct  ones  near  it  are  being  raked 
down  by  busy  hands  into  the  sacred  flood.  It  is 
a  ghastly  sight.  But  all  along  the  ghats  below 
are  thousands  of  ecstatic  meu,  women,  and  chil- 
dren laving  in  the  stream  and  drinking  its  divine 
waters.  Here  truly  is  witnessed  India's  tropical, 
jungle  growth  of  religious  imagination  raised  to 
its  highest  pitch. 

On  one  pure  outsider  such  was  the  impression 
left  by  the  sights  and  scenes  of  holy  Benares. 
But  what  can  an  outsider  know  of  what  was  go- 
ing on  in  the  minds  of  these  countless  pilgrims? 
They  did  not  see  the  filthy  Ganges  I  saw.  They 
saw  a  shining  crystal  stream  flowing  on  to  the  land 
of  Beulah.  They  did  not  shudder  as  I  did  at  the 
cruel  devouring  flames.  They  sang,  "  Agni  greets 
Agni  !  "  our  "  Fire  ascending  seeks  the  sun !  " 
Some  inkling  of  this  even  I  got.  Not  wholly 
ghastly,  but  partly  solemnizing  was  the  scene. 
As  I  floated  along  the  current  of  the  mighty 
symbolic  river  and  looked  off  at  the  stupendous 
spectacle,  in  constant  refrain  came  sounding- 
through  my  mind  the  solemn  imagery  of  the 
hymn,  — 

"  One  army  of  the  living  God, 
To  his  command  we  bow. 
Part  of  the  host  have  crossed  the  flood, 
And  part  are  crossing  now." 


192  INDIA 

One  harrowing  sight,  however,  we  did  not 
witness,  nor  does  any  man  in  these  days, 
since  it  has  been  put  down  with  an  iron  hand  by 
the  British  government.  I  refer  to  Sati,  or  the 
self-immolation  of  the  widow  on  the  funeral  pyre 
of  her  husband,  an  act  of  self-sacrifice  so  rooted 
in  the  admiration  of  the  Hindu  world  that  for  a 
century  government  dared  not  face  the  wrath  any 
attempt  at  its  suppression  would  be  sure  to  evoke. 
That  there  could  have  been  any  sublime  and  heroic 
side  to  such  a  ghastly  superstition,  few  Occidental 
minds  can  conceive.  So,  as  an  illustration  of  the 
difference  between  the  outside  and  the  inside  view 
of  any  venerated  custom,  I  quote  from  the  pages 
of  a  thoroughly  emancipated  Hindu  writer  a  rem- 
iniscence of  his  own  childhood  days.  Readers  fa- 
miliar with  the  Alcestis  of  Euripides  will  admit 
that  the  humble  prose  of  the  Hindu  writer  fairly 
matches,  in  the  scene  it  calls  up,  the  pathetic 
beauty  of  the  Greek  tragedian.  It  is,  at  any  rate, 
a  comfort  to  find  a  fresh  illustration  of  the  adage 
that  there  is  a  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil. 

"  When  I  was  a  little  boy,"  says  the  Hindu 
writer,  "  my  attention  was  one  morning  roused  by 
hearing  from  my  mother  that  my  aunt  was  '  going 
on  a  Sati.'  I  pondered  in  my  mind  what  the  word 
*  Sati '  could  mean.  Being  unable  to  solve  the 
problem,  I  asked  my  mother  for  an  explanation. 
She,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  told  me  that  my  aunt 
was  '  going  to  eat  fire.'  .  .   . 

"  I  ran  down  to  my  aunt's  room  ;  and  what 
should  I  see  there  but  a  group  of  sombre-complex- 


WIDOW-BURNING  193 

ioned  women,  with  my  aunt  in  the  middle.  .  .  . 
She  was  evidently  rapt  in  an  ecstasy  of  devotion, 
earnest  in  all  she  did,  quite  calm  and  composed,  as 
if  nothing  important  was  to  happen.  It  appeared 
to  me  that  all  the  women  assembled  were  admiring 
the  virtue  and  fortitude  of  my  aunt,  while  not  a 
few,  falling'  at  her  feet,  expressed  a  fond  hope 
that  they  might  possess  a  small  particle  of  her 
virtue.  Amidst  all  these  surroundings,  what  sur- 
prised me  most  was  my  aunt's  stretching  out  one  of 
her  hands  and  holding  a  finger  right  over  the  wick 
of  the  burning  lamp  for  a  few  seconds,  until  it  was 
scorched  and  forcibly  withdrawn  by  the  old  lady 
who  bade  her  do  so,  in  order  to  test  the  firmness 
of  her  mind.  The  perfect  composure  with  which 
she  underwent  this  fiery  ordeal  convinced  all  that 
she  was  a  real  Sati,  fit  to  abide  with  her  husband 
in  Boykinta,  —  paradise.  .  .  . 

"The  body  was  laid  on  a  chajyoy.  My  aunt 
followed  it,  not  in  a  closed,  but  in  an  open  palki. 
She  was  unveiled ;  and  regardless  of  the  conse- 
quences of  a  public  exposure,  she  was,  in  a  man- 
ner, dead  to  the  external  world.  In  truth,  she 
was  e\4dently  longing  for  the  hour  when  her  spirit 
and  that  of  her  husband  should  meet  together  and 
dwell  in  heaven. 

"  The  dead  body  being  placed  on  the  pyre,  my 
aunt  was  desired  to  walk  seven  times  round  it, 
which  she  did,  while  strewing  flowers,  cowries, 
and  parched  rice  on  the  ground.  .  .  .  The  Daro- 
gah  stepped  forward  once  more,  and  endeavored 
even  at  the  last  moment   to  deter   her  from   her 


194  INDIA 

fatal  determination.  But  she,  at  the  very  thresh- 
old of  ghastly  death,  the  fatal  torch  of  Yama  be- 
fore her,  calmly  ascended  the  funeral  pile,  and, 
lying  down  by  the  side  of  her  husband,  with  one 
hand  under  his  head  and  another  on  his  breast, 
was  heard  to  call  in  a  half -suppressed  voice, '  Hari ! 
Hari ! '  (Krishna  !  Krishna  !),  —  a  sign  of  her  firm 
belief  in  the  reality  of  eternal  beatitude.  ...  A 
great  shout  of  exultation  then  arose  from  the  sur- 
rounding spectators,  till  both  the  dead  and  living 
bodies  were  converted  into  a  handful  of  dust  and 
ashes." 

In  submitting  this  heroic  and  pathetic  story  and 
simply  leaving  it  to  make  its  own  impression,  I  can 
only  humbly  trust  I  shall  not  be  subjected  to  the 
suspicion  of  being  in  secret  a  perfidious  advocate 
of  Sati,  or  Hindu  widow-burning. 


IV. 


Our  first  stopping-places  after  leaving  Ben- 
ares were  Lucknow  and  Cawnpore,  —  Luck- 
now  the  scene  of  the  heroic  defense  of  the  Re- 
gency under  Lawrence  and  Havelock;  Cawnpore 
that  of  the  revolting  brutalities  exercised  on  the  ill- 
fated  men  and  women  who,  under  General  Wheeler, 
surrendered  themselves  to  the  tiger  mercies  of 
Nana  Sahib.  As  the  terrible  ordeal  of  the  Indian 
mutiny  of  1857  brought  out  the  indomitable  quali- 
ties of  British  character  even  more  signally  than 
the  original  conquest,  we  naturally  desired  to  see 
some  of  the  memorable  spots  where  these  qualities 
had  been  illustrated  at  their  highest  pitch.  In 
reality,  the  reconquest  of  India  meant  quite  an- 
other thing  from  the  conquest ;  for  now  it  was  a 
fight,  not  with  cowardly  and  undisciplined  natives, 
a  host  of  whom  would  run  in  panic  from  a  cor- 
poral's guard,  but  with  Sepoys  thoroughly  trained 
in  modern  tactics,  armed  with  the  best  weapons, 
inspired  with  fanatic,  racial,  and  religious  hate, 
and  who  had  seized  upon  the  great  depositories  of 
treasure,  artillery,  shot,  and  shell,  and  of  cavalry 
and  infantry  equipment.  No  prairie  fire,  started 
at  a  hundred  centres,  and  suddenly  converging  in 
a  universal  sheet  of  flame,  coidd  have  surpassed  in 
speed  and  fury  this  terrific  outbreak. 


196  INDIA 

Liicknow,  a  city  of  over  a  quarter  of  a  million 
inhabitants,  was  the  luxurious  capital  of  the  kings 
of  Oude  till  the  last  of  them  was  deposed  by  the 
British  and  sent  to  Calcutta  to  linger  out  life  on 
a  pension  of  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  month  and 
three  hundred  dancing-girls.  Now,  for  the  first 
time,  one  finds  himself  on  strictly  Mohammedan 
soil.  The  mosque  with  its  slender  minarets,  onion- 
shajDed  domes,  and  severer  Saracenic  forms  has 
mainly  superseded  the  fantastic,  nightmare  delir- 
ium of  the  Hindu  temple.  Further,  as  the  later 
kings  of  Oude  were  consumed  by  a  regal  passion 
for  dancing  that  outdid  Nero  in  his  for  acting  and 
Commodus  in  his  for  gladiatorial  fighting,  highly 
interesting  is  it  to  inspect  his  palace,  with  its  for- 
mer endless  zenana  quarters  for  bewitching  Nautch 
girls  and  mirrored  halls  for  them  to  dance  in,  — 
the  king  himself  ever  graciously  pleased  to  en- 
courage their  modest  efforts  with  saltatory  accom- 
paniments of  his  own  august  heels ;  historically 
instructive,  too,  as  showing  how,  just  as  the  ex- 
treme of  fondness  for  this  graceful  pastime  kindled 
fires  in  the  blood  that  enabled  the  daughter  of 
Herodias  to  dance  off  John  the  Baptist's  head,  so, 
with  their  witcheries,  these  Nautch  girls  danced  off 
the  head  of  the  last  king  of  Oude,  as  grown  too 
vertiginous  with  savagery  and  lust  to  be  longer  fit 
for  affairs  of  state  !  Thus  a  lascivious  art  which, 
with  us,  has  been  reduced  to  a  pale  and  bloodless 
abstraction  is  in  the  East  so  very  concrete  as  to 
explain  much  history,  political  and  religious. 


LUC  KNOW  19T 

,^     It  is  one  thine:  to  read  about  the  defense 
II.  * 

of  the  Regency  of   Lucknow,  even  under 

the  inspiration  of  Tennyson's  heroic  poem ;  but  it 
is  quite  another  to  be  on  the  spot,  and  see  the 
shattered  ruins  that  testify  to  the  literal  hell-fire 
to  which  the  short-handed  garrison  and  crowd  of 
heljaless  women  were  for  five  long-  months  exposed. 
The  Regency  had  formerly  been  an  outlying  pal- 
ace of  the  king  of  Oude,  with  numerous  groups 
of  buildings  for  zenanas,  barracks,  festival  halls, 
and  the  other  appointments  of  an  Indian  court. 
Around  all  these,  inclosing  the  great  gardens,  ran 
a  ten-foot  stone  wall.  But  close  up  to  this  wall 
pressed  on  two  sides  the  solidly  built  houses  of  the 
city,  while  on  the  other  sides  were  eminences  and 
fortress-like  mosques,  from  which  was  completed 
the  circle  of  flame.  Night  and  day,  without  inter- 
mission, the  roar  and  havoc  went  on. 

Before  being  in  Lucknow,  I  was  familiar  with 
the  picture  left  by  a  town  shattered  by  an  earth- 
quake ;  but  it  presented  no  such  scene  of  destruc- 
tion as  this  Regency.  The  buildings  were  simply 
riddled  with  shot  and  shell,  and  pitted  as  if  with 
small-pox  from  the  rain  of  rifle-balls.  At  any 
time  the  garrison  of  men  could  have  cut  their  way 
out ;  but,  alas,  there  were  the  women  I  Too  well 
was  understood  the  fate  that  awaited  them  should 
they  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Sepoys.  And  so 
for  five  long  months,  under  the  blaze  of  the  sum- 
mer sun  of  India,  decimated  with  dysentery  and 
cholera,  devoured  by  swarms  of  flies,  drinking  hot 
and  putrid  water,  their  wounds  refusing  to  heal,  — 


198  INDIA 

the  women  as  heroic  as  the  men,  —  the  sublime 
defense  went  on.  The  way  in  which  Tennyson 
weaves  into  his  poem  all  these  sickening  details 
furnishes  a  striking  illustration  of  the  marvelous 
sense-perception  of  a  poet's  eye.  A  prosaic  mind 
would  no  doubt  have  omitted  the  plague  of  flies  as 
too  undignified  to  allude  to  in  company  with  burst- 
ing shells  and  exploding  mines.  In  reality,  this 
plague  of  flies  was  more  terrible  than  shells  and 
mines.  They  swarmed  down  upon  the  sick,  the 
wounded,  and  the  well,  as  though  already  carrion. 
The  air  and  the  ground  were  black  with  them,  and 
it  was  a  perpetual  fight  not  to  be  eaten  up  alive. 

And  yet  this  scene  of  destruction,  with  its  awful 
memories,  was  no  mere  tragic  or  pathetic  sight. 
How  could  it  be  on  such  a  resplendent  day,  when, 
as  with  the  sun  shining  on  the  evil  and  on  the 
good  and  the  rain  descending  on  the  just  and  on  the 
unjust,  the  exuberance  of  tropical  nature  was  mak- 
ing haste  to  cover  havoc  and  ruin  in  such  robes 
of  green  and  scarlet  and  gold  that  death  seemed 
swallowed  up  in  victory.  Every  memory,  too,  was 
bracing  to  the  spirit.  Had  we  met  under  ordinary 
circumstances  the  men  and  women  who  faced  this 
stern  ordeal,  how  tiresome  and  commonplace  would 
the  majority  of  them  have  seemed !  What  dreary 
garrison  gossip  should  we  have  had  to  listen  to, 
what  reiteration  of  the  grumblings  that  constitute 
the  main  wellspring  of  happiness  to  the  British 
mind !  what  vulgar  liberties  taken  with  the  letter 
"  h  " !  But,  when  the  crisis  came,  how  magnifi- 
cently all  flamed  out  in  valor,  self-sacrifice,  absolute 


CA  WNPORE  199 

devotion  to  one  another,  in  the  angelic  care  of  the 
wounded  and  cholera-smitten,  and  in  an  heroic  for- 
titude no  stress  of  misery  could  break.  Bracing, 
indeed,  such  witness  that  underneath  our  common- 
place, of  the  earth  earthy,  humanity  there  lie  such 
possibilities.  It  helps  every  one  to  hope  of  his  own 
poor  self,  "  Perhaps,  after  all,  at  the  root  of  me  I 
am  not  such  a  pitiful  whipster  as  on  the  surface  I " 
Deeply  one  feels  this  as  he  stands  in  the  great 
vaulted  cellar  in  which  the  women  were  shut  up  for 
protection,  and  thinks  of  them,  crowded  in  there, 
and,  after  high  Roman  fashion,  searchingiy  debat- 
ing whether,  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst,  they 
woidd  be  justified  in  killing  themselves  to  save  their 
purity,  or  as  Christians  should  endure  to  the  end 
every  horror  permitted  by  the  inscrutable  will  of 
God! 

To  be  fair,  brave,  too,  were  the  Sepoys,  worthy  of 
all  praise  for  their  desperate  valor.  But  here  was 
a  fight  of  civilized  reason  with  blind  fanaticism,  of 
stable  order  with  weltering  chaos  ;  above  all  a  fight 
of  chivalrous  men  for  helpless  women  against  a 
swarm  of  wretches,  rather  than  fall  into  whose  pol- 
luting hands  they  would  have  chosen  the  tender 
mercies  of  tigers.  Cawnpore  was  soon  to  show  the 
world  from  what  fate  these  women  were  saved. 

In   Cawnpore,   however,    the   scenes   could 

call  out   no  sentiments  but   those  of  pity 

or  wrath.     The  flimsy,  wretched  intrenchment  of 

earth  which  the  "  worst  rider  on  the  worst  horse 

could  have  jumped  over,"  into  which  were  crowded 


200  INDIA 

the  soldiers,  women,  and  children  ;  the  imbecility 
of  their  general,  brave  and  devoted,  but  too  old  for 
decisive  action ;  the  one  well  from  which  at  night 
—  women  and  children  continually  shot  down  in 
the  service  —  they  could  draw  their  scant  supply 
of  water  in  such  torrid  heat ;  the  other  well  just  be- 
yond the  intrenchment,  into  which  after  dark,  and 
equally  under  fire,  they  stealthily  flung  their  mul- 
tiplying dead,  —  all  this  jiresented  the  conditions 
of  a  slaughter-pen  too  horrible  to  revive  in  imagina- 
tion. Then,  after  twenty-three  days,  followed  the 
surrender,  on  the  written  pledge  from  Nana  Sahib 
of  a  safe  passage  down  the  Ganges  to  Allahabad. 
It  was  written,  not  with  a  human  hand,  but  with  a 
tiger's  claw. 

A  couple  of  miles  away  on  the  river  side  lies  the 
ghat,  or  broad  flight  of  stone  steps  descending  to 
the  Ganges,  to  which  the  wretched  victims  were 
marched.  At  first  all  seemed  to  show  that  Nana 
Sahib  was  faithfid  to  his  pledge.  The  boats  were 
on  hand,  and  into  a  number  of  them  were  loaded 
the  prisoners,  and  one  after  another  started  down 
the  river.  Soon,  however,  it  was  noticed  that  only 
the  older  women  were  allowed  to  embark,  while  the 
younger  were  kept  back.  "  We  are  betrayed !  " 
groaned  General  Wheeler ;  and  his  head  sunk  on 
his  breast.  Forthwith,  at  a  given  signal,  a  blaze  of 
fire  burst  forth  on  the  ghat,  and  from  the  trees  on 
the  river-bank  along  which  the  boats  were  passing. 
The  native  boatmen  had  already  jumped  into  the 
river,  and  were  swimming  ashore.  In  an  instant 
General  Wheeler   and    his  staff  were    shot  dead ; 


CA  WNPORE  201 

while  the  merciless  fire  from  the  bank  poured  in 
upon  the  poor  men  and  women  that  had  embarked, 
and  set  the  boats  in  flames. 

To  more  than  hint  at  the  fate,  for  the  next  twenty 
days,  of  the  younger  women,  then  marched  back, 
would  be  too  revolting.  Stories  are  told  on  the 
spot  which  will  never  get  into  any  of  the  public 
histories.  Even  the  avenger,  in  the  shape  of  Gen- 
eral Havelock  and  his  little  army,  came  too  late  for 
them ;  for,  on  the  first  defeat  of  his  forces,  Nana 
Sahib  ordered  in  the  town  butchers  with  their 
knives  to  slaughter  the  wretched  women  and  their 
children,  who  were  then,  dying  and  dead,  thrown 
into  an  adjoining  well.  Two  hours  later  Havelock 
and  his  army  were  on  the  sjjot.  Ah,  Christian 
hero  and  so-called  Christian  soldiers,  in  the  jungle 
of  your  hearts  lurks  the  bloodthirsty  tiger  as  in  the 
Indian  jungle  !  Vanished  from  sight  the  last  faint 
glimpse  of  the  compassionate  one  on  the  cross  with 
his  "  Father  forgive,  they  know  not  what  they  do !  " 
All  hell  broke  loose  in  the  hearts  of  the  cursing, 
hysterically  weeping  soldiers,  and  yet  this  hell 
seeming  a  flame  of  sacred  fire  from  heaven,  the  car- 
nival of  vengeance  now  set  in.  "  General  Neale, 
you  will  see  these  prisoners  properly  executed," 
sternly  commanded  Havelock.  Neale  rolled  up  his 
sleeves,  and  gave  his  order :  "  First  dras:  these 
devils  through  Christian  blood  !  "  It  was  obeyed, 
and  over  the  pools  of  the  still  warm  blood  of  the 
so  lately  butchered  women  the  men  were  trailed. 
Then,  scores  by  scores,  they  were  blown  from  the 
mouths  of  cannon,  or  hung  from  the  branches  of  a 


202  INDIA 

neighboring  tree  till  it  could  bear  no  further  weight 
of  its  ghastly  fruit. 

Like  looking  down  from  the  rim  of  a  crater  into 
the  j)it  of  fiery  lava  below,  was  it  to  stand  on  the 
very  spot  and  listen  to  the  tale  of  this  volcanic  out- 
break of  human  passion  from  the  lips  of  an  old 
soldier  who  had  come  in  with  Havelock's  force,  and 
been  an  eye-witness  of  this  scene. 

Three  ineffaceable  memories  will  always  linger 
in  my  mind  as  interpreters  of  these  tragic  scenes. 
The  first,  the  Hindu  temple  which  stands  on  the 
top  of  the  ghat  descending  to  the  Ganges,  and  from 
the  banks  beside  which  the  murderous  fire  was 
poured  into  the  boats.  The  temple  itself  is  carved 
and  painted  with  obscenities  so  hideously  revolting 
as  to  seem  fit  shrine  to  inspire  such  atrocities.  The 
second  will  be  that  of  the  inscription  over  the  gate 
of  the  cemetery,  where  beneath  palms  and  feathery 
acacias  sleep  the  majority  of  those  who  perished  in 
the  siege.  The  words  were  simply,  "  Tread  softly." 
The  third,  the  pathetic  fitness  of  the  Scripture 
passage  chosen  for  the  monument  over  the  well 
into  which  were  thrown  the  butchered  women  and 
children.  It  is  from  a  verse  of  the  Psalms,  the 
startling  realism  of  whose  imagery  of  the  wood- 
chopper  and  his  chips  had  a  thousand  times  im- 
pressed me,  and  which  now  seemed  to  revive  its  lit- 
eral sense ;  "  Our  bones  are  scattered  at  the  grave's 
mouth,  as  when  one  cutteth  and  cleaveth  wood 
upon  the  earth." 

Immense,  however,  as  was  the  cost  of  the  recon- 
quest,  and  terrible  as  were  the  passions  let  loose. 


CA  WNPORE  203 

every  day  one  spends  in  India  convinces  him  more 
profoundly  of  the  infinite  boon  it  is  to  this  vast 
population  to  be  held  in  subjection  by  a  power  at 
once  so  strong,  enlightened,  and  humane  as  that  of 
Great  Britain.  To  leave  once  again  to  themselves 
these  peoples  of  such  diverse  races  and  fanaticisms 
would  be  like  opening  all  the  cages  in  a  menagerie, 
and  letting  jaguar,  leopard,  lion,  rhinoceros  fight 
out  the  question  of  supremacy  among  themselves. 
The  beast  that  would  end  off  king  would  be  the 
tiger ;  and,  as  has  significantly  been  added,  the 
tiofer  would  be  the  Mohammedan. 


V. 

As  one  travels  by  rail  across  the  vast  fer- 
tile plains  of  northern  India,  and  every  now 
and  then  comes  out  on  a  city,  with  its  temples, 
mosques,  and  palaces  of  Maharajas,  or  of  wealthy 
merchants,  the  whole  social  and  political  history 
of  India  is  explained  at  a  glance.  As  a  rule, 
there  is  but  one  step  from  the  hovel  to  the  pal- 
ace. Rude  as  the  tepees  of  our  North  American 
Indians  are  the  majority  of  the  huts  of  the  natives. 
Built,  as  a  general  rule,  of  dried  mud,  with  no 
opening  to  the  light  and  air  but  a  door-frame 
minus  a  door,  the  roof  a  thatch  of  palm  or  bamboo 
grass,  they  literally  swarm  with  children,  and,  no 
doubt,  countless  other  tenants.  Fifty  or  sixty  of 
these  huts  are  commonly  huddled  together,  yet 
not  so  closely  but  that  they  are  shaded  with  pic- 
turesque bananas,  palms,  and  mangoes,  the  light 
and  shade  of  which  are  glorified  with  the  scarlet, 
green,  and  gold  of  the  dresses  of  the  women,  and 
turned  into  an  Eden  of  primeval  innocence  by 
the  beautiful  naked  bodies,  the  animated  bronze, 
of  the  children.  Undue  sympathy,  however,  for 
little  boys  and  girls  devoid  of  clothes  is  at 
once  cheeked  by  the  thought  how  vastly  more 
comfortable  they  are  without  than  with  them. 
Besides,   another    happy   reflection   comes  to  the 


ORIENTAL   SAVINGS-BANKS  205 

rescue.  If  too  poor  to  wear  clothes,  there  are 
none  of  them  too  poor  to  indulge  in  jewelry. 
Rarely  a  naked  little  tyke  that  has  not  silver 
bracelets  on  his  wrists  and  silver  anklets  on  his 
feet. 

"  I  can  get  along  without  necessities,  but  I  must 
have  luxuries,"  is  in  India  no  mere  witty  Gal- 
lie  paradox.  It  is  hard,  practical  common  sense. 
To  sell  a  nose-ring  for  a  dress  would  be  to  an 
Indian  woman  a  far  wilder  freak  of  insanity  than 
for  an  American  woman  to  sell  her  dress  for  a 
nose-ring,  and  would  draw  down  upon  her  graver 
censure  from  her  sex.  Accordingly,  many  the  ex- 
tremely poor  Indian  woman  one  meets,  carrying 
on  her  head  an  unsightly  load  of  dried  cakes  of 
cow-dung,  the  principal  fuel,  with  both  her  arms 
six  inches  deep  in  bracelets,  and  both  her  an- 
kles six  deep  in  anklets,  not  to  speak  of  stone- 
set  rings  in  both  flanges  and  the  central  cartilage 
of  the  nose,  together  with  a  miscellaneous  collection 
hanging  from  the  upper  circles  and  the  lobes  of 
the  ears. 

In  all  conscience,  this  would  seem  jewelry 
enough  for  any  reasonable  woman  in  distressingly 
limited  pecuniary  circumstances  to  care  to  disport. 
Not  at  all.  On  the  road  one  falls  in  with  great 
troops  of  gypsies,  who  in  addition  wear  on  each 
toe  a  ring  with  a  little  tinkling  bell  attached,  thus 
picturesquely  illustrating  the  song,  "  She  shall  have 
music  wherever  she  goes."  Inevitably,  is  one  car- 
ried back  in  imagination  over  two  thousand  years, 
as  now  in  all  its  vividness  is  lighted  up  to  him 


206  INDIA 

the  stern  denunciation  of  Isaiah :  "  Because  the 
daughters  of  Zion  are  haughty,  and  walk  with 
stretched  forth  necks  and  wanton  eyes,  walking 
and  mincing  as  they  go,  and  making  a  tinkling  with 
their  feet :  .  .  .  therefore  the  Lord  will  take  away 
the  bravery  of  their  tinkling  ornaments,  .  .  .  the 
bracelets,  ear-rings,  and  nose  jewels,"  together,  in 
the  sacred  text,  with  a  catalogue  of  other  feminine 
adornments  I  have  not  had  the  good  fortune  to 
encounter  even  in  India,  but  which  most  likely 
prevail  in  circles  from  which,  on  grounds  of  faith 
and  practice,  I  am  unhappily  debarred. 

But  these  poor,  half-fed  women  I  have  been 
describing  the  sublime  prophet  could  never  have 
had  the  heart  to  denounce.  The  one  and  only 
savings-bank  they  have  ever  heard  of  is  the  nose, 
ears,  wrists,  ankles,  and  toes  of  a  woman.  There 
they  store  away  their  ancestral  inheritance,  their 
hard-earned  savings,  the  future  portion  of  their 
children.  Scarcely  would  starvation  induce  them 
to  break  in  upon  the  sacred  hoard.  And  yet 
they,  with  a  family  of  six,  are  living  on  two  dol- 
lars and  a  half  a  month.  Poor  things,  let  them 
tinkle  as  they  go !  Not  of  them,  but  of  their  wan- 
ton Nautch-girl  sisters  in  the  zenanas,  did  Isaiah 
speak. 

Continually,  as  we  journeyed  on,  would  the 

question  arise,  "  Are  these  poor  people  at 

heart   as   miserable   as   their  surroundings  would 

seem  to  argue  ?  "     It  is  a  great  relief  to  say  that 

probably  they  are  not.     Theirs  is  a  passive  tem- 


INDIAN  PESSIMISM  207 

perament ;  their  work  is  a  quiet  routine,  no  demon 
of  machiuery  goads  them  on  to  keep  pace  with  its 
whirling-  wheels.  With  plenty  of  leisure  for  talk 
and  laughter,  they  have  no  sons  to  put  through 
Harvard ;  their  daughters  are  married  at  ten  or 
twelve  ;  they  enter  on  the  Nirvana  of  grandfather 
or  grandmother  at  twenty-six ;  and  finally  their  re- 
ligion affords  them,  with  its  ceremonials  and  pil- 
grimages, a  constant  imaginative  delight,  broken, 
it  is  true,  by  some  frightful  nightmares.  Few, 
indeed,  the  farmers,  mechanics,  or  clerks  who, 
with  us,  could  get  off  for  such  week-long  holiday 
tramps  as  they,  to  the  temples  of  favorite  deities 
or  saints,  —  tramps  on  which  they  take  along  with 
them  their  wives  and  children  and  neighbors  and 
friends,  all  seeing  the  world  together,  and  at  the 
same  time  washing  away  their  sins.  In  fact,  what 
Saratoga,  the  White  Sulphur  Springs,  Newport, 
are  to  the  well-off  with  us,  that  and  more  than 
that  are  Benares,  Jagannath,  and  a  host  of  other 
shrines,  to  millions  of  the  poorest  of  the  poor  in 
India. 

Of  course  in  the  past  history  of  India,  wars, 
harryings,  and  burnings  must  have  wrought  inde- 
scribable misery.  And  yet  in  a  country  like  this, 
and  with  such  a  people,  devastations  are  rapidly 
recovered  from.  Human  nature  adapts  itself  to 
anything  ;  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that,  in  the 
case  of  such  a  people,  it  is  a  good  deal  as  with 
the  hawks  and  the  sparrows.  The  hawk  pounces 
down,  and  there  is  a  wild  fluttering  and  screaming. 
He  secures  his  victim,  and  flies  away.     Soon    all 


208  INDIA 

is  forgotten,  and  the  little  birds  are  twittering  and 
singing  on  the  branches  as  before. 

In  fine,  what  is  so  widely  characterized  as  the 
deep-rooted  melancholy  and  pessimism  of  India 
is  a  passive  rather  than  an  active,  a  soothing 
rather  than  an  embittering,  sentiment,  at  the  last 
remove  from  the  misanthropy  of  a  Dean  Swift 
rushing  madly  from  a  hateful  world  to  "die  of 
rage  like  a  poisoned  rat  in  his  hole  ;"  nearer  akin, 
indeed,  to  Jaques  in  the  Forest  of  Arden,  with 
his,  "  I  can  suck  melancholy  out  of  a  song,  as 
a  weasel  sucks  eggs.  More,  I  prithee,  more." 
Rather  does  it  take  the  form  of  a  vague  and 
dreamy  sense  of  the  evanescence  of  human  life 
and  of  tranquil  indifference  to  what  it  has  to 
offer.  All  this  coil  is  not  worth  the  price.  Toil 
is  pain,  care  is  fever,  dreamy  rest  alone  is  sweet. 
As  opium  to  the  nerves,  such  is  religion  to  the 
spirit,  the  delicate  haze  that  dissolves  the  hard  out- 
lines of  reality,  the  sense  of  the  serene  universal 
life  that  quiets  down  all  fret  of  the  finite. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  in  India  opium  and  reli- 
gion are  craved  by  the  peasant  as  the  two  great  tran- 
quillizers. Thus  among  the  causes  of  the  final  utter 
extinction  of  Buddhism  in  the  land  of  its  birth, 
and  the  rehabilitation  in  public  favor  of  its  rival, 
such  scholars  as  Bartli  are  disjDOsed  to  rank  chief 
the  morbid  monotony,  in  its  later  developments,  of 
the  Buddhistic  insistence  on  an  utterly  pessimistic 
view  of  human  existence  along  with  a  return  to 
ascetic  practices,  all  at  the  cost  of  the  present 
realized  peace  so  beautifully  illustrated  in  the  life 


SNAKES  209 

of  its  founder.  Indeed,  in  original  Buddhism, 
pessimism  served  but  as  the  negative  to  a  positive, 
but  as  the  vanishing  point  of  the  finite  for  entrance 
on  non-finite  blessedness.  It  was  the  Oriental 
solution  of  the  paradox  of  losing  the  life  to  find  it, 
of  the  paradox  of  St.  Paul,  "  poor,  yet  making 
many  rich,  having  nothing,  and  yet  possessing  all 
things."  And  so  it  became  a  gospel  of  present 
salvation  from  all  consciousness  of  the  ills  of  ex- 
istence to  millions,  alike  of  the  poor  and  ignorant 
who  in  such  a  climate  crave  mainly  the  feeling  of 
sensuous  —  not  sensual  —  repose,  and  to  the  wealthy 
and  powerful  who  were  wooed  by  it  to  turn  away 
from  the  greeds  and  ambitions  that  heat  the  blood 
and  fret  the  spirit  toward  the  interior  enjoyment 
of  those  gentle  and  kindly  feelings  in  which  alone 
tranquillity  and  peace  abide. 

Back  in  our  own  childhood  days,  many  the 
moral  drawn  for  our  improvement  from 
the  bellicose  propensities  of  cats  and  dogs  in  con- 
trast with  the  loving  spirit  that  should  prevail  in 
well-regulated  households  of  little  boys  and  girls. 
In  India  one  often  wonders  whether  the  stupen- 
dous scale  upon  which  this  lesson  is  illustrated  on 
the  part  of  the  whole  animal  creation  has  not  had 
a  vast  deal  to  do  with  the  depth  of  the  national 
reaction  in  favor  of  mental  peace.  While  the  men. 
women,  and  children  are  vegetarians,  all  the  other 
members  of  creation,  from  the  Bengal  tiger  to  the 
most  invisible  gnat,  are  not.  Such  apparatus  of 
stings,  claws,  fangs,  suction-tubes,  incisors,  all  ex- 


210  INDIA 

quisitely  contrived  for  the  partition  and  assimilation 
of  flesh  and  blood,  hardly  elsewhere  can  be  par- 
alleled. And  yet  nowhere  else  does  such  aversion 
prevail  against  taking  life.  When  one  sees  great 
troops  of  stark-naked  fakirs  and  mathematically 
calculates  the  area  of  surface  they  expose  in  invita- 
tion to  mosquitoes,  gnats,  ants,  ticks,  and  chigres, 
—  not  to  speak  of  the  graver  temptations  opened 
up  to  snakes,  leopards,  and  lions,  —  one  is  lost  in 
admiration  of  the  positive  refusal  on  the  part  of 
the  fakir  to  retort  in  kind.  In  reality  can  he  tran- 
quilly "  meditate  the  absolute  and  immutable  "  on 
an  outdoor  carpet  of  ants  and  under  a  canopy  of 
gnats  and  feel  "  I  am  Brahma,  and  fiery  skin  and 
stinging  pismire  are  but  figments  of  a  dream," 
while,  with  us,  a  single  fly  is  enough  to  take  all  the 
tenderness  out  of  a  love-letter,  the  soundness  out 
of  a  legal  brief,  nay,  all  the  devoutness  even  out  of 
a  sermon  ?  If  he  can,  then  what  a  joint  miracle 
of  interior  absorption  and  exterior  cuticular  indu- 
ration !  The  Occidental  world  needs  such  men  as 
missionaries. 

In  view,  then,  of  the  richness  and  variety  of 
the  animal  kingdom  in  India,  and  of  its  probable 
psychologic  connection  with  certain  of  the  most 
striking  traits  of  the  inhabitants,  it  woiild  seem 
invidious  on  the  part  of  the  traveler  to  omit  his 
meed  of  tribute  to  such  divisions  of  it  as  espe- 
cially have  interested  and  instructed  him.  So 
personally  I  feel  moved  to  devote  a  few  words  to 
snakes. 

In  Ceylon  more  people  are  killed  by  falls  from 


GAUDIUM    CERTAMINIS  211 

cocoa-nut  palms  than  perish  from  snake-bites.  Not 
that  tliis  is  to  be  construed  in  mitigation  of  snakes, 
but  it  does  seem  to  emphasize  the  moral  respon- 
sibility of  one  portion  of  the  globe  for  another 
in  thus  so  clearly  connecting  every  little  cocoa- 
nut-eating  boy  at  home  in  guilty  complicity  with 
the  awful  fate  of  widowhood  in  India.  None  the 
less,  snakes  abound  everywhere,  especially  hooded 
cobras,  so  enshrined  in  religious  veneration  that 
not  even  the  loss  of  a  favorite  child  will  induce 
any  but  the  lowest  caste  Hindus  to  kill  one  of 
them. 

From  these  low-caste  Hindus  is  it  that  are  re- 
cruited the  ranks  of  the  so-called  snake-charmers, 
itinerant  showmen  whose  main  charm  consists 
in  cutting  out  the  fangs  and  poison  sacs  of  the 
brutes  before  disporting  with  them  in  public.  Even 
then  the  hateful  reptiles  maintain  a  certain  pres- 
tige of  horror  which  sets  fascinating  cold  chills 
running  down  the  back  as,  spite  of  the  loss  of 
their  venomous  weapons,  they  still  keep  striking 
out  in  the  most  vicious  manner.  That  the  moral- 
ity of  every  act  lies  solely  in  its  intention  is  made 
plain  to  the  obtusest  ethical  observers.  Still,  no 
intelligent  traveler  is  willing  to  content  himself 
with  cobras  with  their  fangs  cut  out,  more  than 
with  tigers  lapping  gruel  instead  of  blood.  He 
wants  to  see  the  frightful  rejitile  in  all  his  terror 
and  all  his  malignity,  and  this,  if  he  will  pay  the 
price,  the  snake-charmers  will  give  him  a  chance 
to  witness  in  a  fight  between  a  full-fanged  cobra 
and  a  mongoose. 


212  INDIA 

So  imperfect  are  the  sympathies  of  the 
average  man  with  the  cobra  that  from  a 
purely  spiritual  point  of  view  a  fight  between  him 
and  a  mongoose  has  none  of  the  drawbacks  in  the 
way  of  wounded  sensibilities  attendant  on  an  en- 
counter between  two  creatures  of  the  higher  rank 
of  dogs.  Spite  of  his  adoption  of  the  hood  of  a 
devout  Carmelite,  the  cobra  remains  at  heart  a 
sinuous,  slimy,  pestiferous  brute,  whom  hardly  the 
Buddha  could  take  home  to  his  bosom  and  love. 
He  glides  into  the  arena,  moreover,  guilty  of  the 
blood  of  at  least  ten  thousand  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren a  year  in  his  native  land.  His  adversary,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  a  lithe,  mercurial,  lightning-swift 
little  lemur,  of  ferret  or  weasel  build,  —  an  electric 
flash  of  intelligence  and  aim  irresistibly  remind- 
ing one,  in  temperament  and  fibre,  of  the  miracu- 
lous French  scholastic  champion  Abelard,  all  on  a 
quiver  for  an  intellectual  set-to  with  the  most  re- 
doubtable swash-buckler  of  Nominalism  or  Real- 
ism, William  of  Champeaux  or  other.  The  very 
prince  of  subtle  acumen,  ready  to  let  fly  in  an  in- 
stant and  with  unerring  aim  at  every  joint  in  the 
armor  of  his  antagonist,  the  mongoose  sails  into 
battle  like  the  marvelous  Frenchman,  a  derisive 
smile  playing  around  his  white  teeth  that  prophe- 
sies victory  from  the  start. 

Plainly  at  the  very  outset  the  cobra  is  gravely 
disconcerted  and  would  be  glad  to  slink  out  of 
the  controversy  through  any  knot-hole.  The  con- 
vincing logical  categories  on  which  hitherto  he 
has  relied  so  confidently  seem  inconclusive  in  the 


GAUDIUM    CERTAMINIS  213 

presence  of  an  intelligence  so  mncli  more  acute. 
But  there  is  no  escape.  Every  hair  erect  with 
metaphysical  frenzy  and  eyes  blood-shot  with  bat- 
tle-flame, electric  Abelard  is  circling  round  him. 
So  out  the  cobra  lashes  with  his  terrible  fangs  in 
what  is  meant  to  be  a  mortal  argument.  Lightly 
the  mongoose  springs  aside  or  leaps  whole  feet  into 
the  air,  and  the  fangs  strike  idly  into  invulner- 
able space ;  while  before  the  cobra  can  recover 
himself  his  quicksilver  antagonist  has  got  in  on 
tail  or  body  an  irritating  argumentative  nip  with 
his  ferret  teeth. 

So  far,  all  this  on  the  mongoose's  part  is  but 
a  pleasant  by-play  of  logical  fence.  His  intuitive 
mind  is  simply  preluding  with  the  graver  issue. 
Just  where  the  force  of  his  adversary's  major  pre- 
mise lies  is  to  him  as  plain  as  day,  and  that  it  lies 
not  in  his  body  or  tail  but  in  his  brain.  An  un- 
guarded movement,  a  promising  opening,  and  with 
a  lightning-swift  spring  through  the  air,  the  infal- 
lible logician  has  seized  the  cobra  just  back  of  the 
head  where  the  turn  is  too  short  to  bring  the  fangs 
to  bear.  Master  of  the  situation,  intellect  and 
teeth  are  now  concentrated  on  the  single  point  at 
stake.  All  in  vain  the  infuriated  cobra  writhes  his 
coils  round  the  mongoose's  body,  rolls  him  over 
and  over  along  the  arena,  and  thrashes  him  on  the 
ground.  Not  for  a  moment  is  the  clearness  of  his 
mental  vision  distracted  by  such  specious  sophis- 
tries. Steadily  he  hangs  on  to  the  major  premise, 
gnawing  his  way  ever  higher  and  higher  up  till 
at  last  his  keen-ground  metaphysical  teeth  have 


214  INDIA 

pierced  the  brain.  The  quick  of  the  controversy 
is  reached  and  forever  silenced.  William  of  Cham- 
peaux  lies  stark  and  still,  while  without  waste  of 
further  breath,  victorious  Abelard  quietly  with- 
draws from  the  university  arena,  leaving  the  as- 
sembled students  lost  in  admiration  at  the  bril- 
liancy of  his  controversial  tactics. 

Surely,  if  fighting  there  must  be,  here  is  a  kind 
in  which  the  intellectual  element  so  dominates 
the  brutal  as  to  render  it  distinctly  educational. 
Wholly  beyond,  moreover,  and  realms  above  its 
mere  dazzling  brilliancy  is  felt  its  profound  ethical 
and  historical  significance  ;  for,  presumptuously  as 
has  been  challenged  for  itself  by  another  world- 
famous  exhibition  the  title  of  the  "  Greatest  Moral 
Show  on  Earth,"  this  fairly  may  claim  its  right  to 
the  proud  appellation.  Frivolous,  indeed,  must  be 
the  nature  on  whose  imagination  the  scene  does 
not  impress  itself  as  a  sublime  piece  of  symbolism 
in  which  nothing  less  momentous  is  typified  than 
the  elemental  stniggle  of  light  and  darkness,  good 
and  evil.  "  Ah  !  "  soliloquizes  the  more  reflective 
mind,  —  "  ah !  that  instead  of  poor,  scatter-brained 
mother  Eve  our  '  first  parent '  had  been  the  mon- 
goose. How  different,  then,  the  issue  of  the  primal 
battles  with  the  serpent,  and  how  changed  the  sub- 
sequent event  of  human  history  !  " 


VI. 


Before  going  on  to  record  the  impressions 
left  by  Agra  and  Delhi,  the  two  most  splen- 
did capitals  of  the  Mogul  dynasty,  a  brief  historical 
sketch  may  not  be  out  of  place. 

Several  chapters  back,  a  comparison  was  made 
between  the  Alps  and  the  plain  of  Lombardy  on 
the  one  hand  and,  on  the  other,  the  Himalayas 
and  the  enormous  level  stretches  of  northern  India, 
the  object  being  to  show  on  how  vastly  more  colos- 
sal a  geological  scale  India  was  fashioned.  Pre- 
cisely the  same  overpowering  impression  on  the 
imagination  is  made  the  moment  one  tries  to  form 
an  adequate  conception  of  the  relation  in  which 
India  has  ever  stood  to  the  enormous  races  and 
nationalities  environing  her  for  thousands  of  miles 
to  the  west  and  the  north,  —  in  Arabia,  Persia, 
Afghanistan,  Turkestan,  China,  Tartary. 

As  one  reads  the  story  of  the  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  he  is  awed  at  the  thought  of  the  hordes 
of  Goths,  Vandals,  Lombards,  Teutons,  that  stood 
ready  to  pour  down  on  that  narrow  fringe  of  civili- 
zation around  the  Mediterranean ;  but  how  petty 
in  numbers  and  range  were  these  in  comparison 
with  the  inconceivably  vaster  hordes  —  when  once 
they  should  become  unified  under  a  conquering  re- 
ligion —  to  be  drawn  from  the  enormous  expanses 


216  INDIA 

of  western  and  northern  Asia  !  One  little  swoop 
of  their  swarms  in  the  far-back  days  of  Attila  came 
near  destroying  the  Roman  Empire ;  and  yet  this 
was  but  as  a  single  wave  of  the  ocean  to  the  succes- 
sive myriads  of  them  breaking  on  and  over  the 
northern  rock-barriers  of  India.  Indeed,  in  think- 
ing of  Asia  in  comparison  with  Europe,  one  is 
perpetually  reminded  of  a  sajdng  of  Alexander  the 
Great  after  he  had  embarked  on  his  career  of 
Oriental  conquest :  "  When  I  get  a  dispatch  from 
my  little  kingdom  of  Macedon,  rej)orting  to  me  the 
taking  of  some  insignificant  hill  town  or  of  a  suc- 
cessful fight  for  the  capture  of  a  ford,  I  seem  to  he 
reading  of  the  battles  of  the  frogs  and  mice." 

Through  the  birth  and  religion  of  Mohammed, 
who  died  in  632  a.  d.,  came  the  flash  that  was  to 
set  aflame,  not  in  one,  but  in  century-successive, 
prairie  fires,  these  vast  inflammable  areas  of  races 
and  nationalities.  Here  was  a  religion  which  made 
paradise  and  plunder,  loyalty  and  looting,  one  and 
indivisible,  —  an  entrancing  harmony  of  the  ferocity 
of  nature  with  the  attractions  of  grace.  "  The  pos- 
sessions of  the  infidel  are  the  inheritance  of  the 
faithful,"  had  been  the  proclamation  of  the  Prophet 
himself.  What  sanguinary  Afghan,  bloodthirsty 
Turcoman,  ugly,  squint-eyed  Tartar,  but  would 
yearn  to  become  a  child  of  Allah  when  the  news 
of  such  a  gospel  shoidd  reach  him  in  his  rugged 
mountain  fastnesses,  or  on  his  wide,  grass-waving 
steppes  ? 

Well-nigh  from  the  outset  of  the  rise  of  the 
Mohammedan  power,  India  was  the  Eoman  Empire 


ELIMINATING   THE   TARTAR  217 

of  the  soutli  of  Asia,  on  which  the  covetous  eyes  of 
the  faithful  wei'e  fixed.  "  Lieber  Gott !  "  cried  out 
rough-and-ready  General  Bliicher,  when  he  first 
saw  London,  "  what  a  city  to  loot !  "  What  might 
not  have  been  said  of  India,  with  its  mines  of  gold 
and  jewels,  its  temples  heaped  with  treasures,  its 
cities  teeming  with  manufactories  of  silks  and 
tissues  of  gold,  its  palaces  of  kings  and  princes  ? 
As  early  as  650  began  the  invasions  from  Arabia, 
while  meantime  conquests  were  pushed  through 
Persia  and  clear  up  to  the  Hindu  Kush.  For  cen- 
turies the  struggle  went  on,  ever  increasing  in  fury 
and  weight  of  numbers  as  the  vast  hordes  of  the 
north  came  under  Mohammedan  sway.  Province 
after  province  was  conquered  and  securely  held, 
while  at  times  devastating  incursions  like  that  of 
Timur,  the  Tartar,  in  1398,  swept  everythiug  help- 
lessly before  them.  Not,  however,  till  the  invasion 
of  Babar,  sixth  in  descent  from  the  terrible  Timur, 
was  anything  like  the  foundation  laid  of  a  perma- 
nent Mohammedan  dynasty  ruling  all  India,  —  the 
famous  Mogul  dynasty,  which  continued  on,  in 
shadow  at  least,  till,  in  the  Sepoy  rebellion,  the 
last  of  its  princes  were  dragged  out  from  the  sub- 
terranean chambers  of  their  ancestors'  tomb  and 
shot  dead  by  brutal  Hodson  of  Hodson's  Horse. 

The  term  Mogul  dynasty  can  easily  become 
misleading,  suggestive  as  it  is  of  the  stiff- 
haired,    yellow-faced,    squint-eyed    Tartar.      Long 
before  the  consolidation  every  trace  of  this  kind 
of   physical,    mental,   and   moral   strabismus   had 


218  INDIA 

been  drowned  out  of  the  royal  family  in  overpower- 
ing mixtures  of  Afghan,  Persian,  Circassian,  Sara- 
cen, Jewish,  even  Christian  blood.  Whatever  the 
pros  and  cons  as  to  polygamy,  one  thing  is  cer- 
tain, —  polygamy  of  the  extra-racial  kind  is  good 
for  the  Tartar.  Cut  off  from,  or  aesthetically  es- 
chewing, Tartar  wives,  he  is  enabled  steadily  to 
efface  himself  for  the  benefit  of  his  posterity. 
What  with  Aryan  and  Semitic  wives  at  freest 
command,  —  the  only  two  that,  historically,  are 
worthy  of  consideration,  —  he,  in  the  course  of 
generations,  ultimately  reduces  to  zero  his  horse- 
mane  hair,  squint  eyes,  and  tallow  face,  and  along 
with  these  their  corresponding  intellectual,  aesthetic, 
and  moral  qualities.  Then  scratch  his  skin,  and  you 
will  not  find  the  Tartar.  With  the  addition  of 
the  plural  for  the  singular,  the  adage  now  proves 
true  that  a  man  owes  all  he  is  to  —  his  mothers. 

No,  you  will  not  find  the  Tartar  in  the  emperors 
of  the  so-called  Mogul  dynasty.  Swiftly  they  estab- 
lished a  brilliant,  cosmopolitan,  and,  in  many  ways, 
wise  and  scientific  administration.  In  1556,  only 
sixty  years  after  Babar's  conquest,  began  the  won- 
derful half-century  reign  of  Akbar  the  Great,  which 
inaugurated  the  renaissance  age  of  India.  Art, 
literature,  philosophy,  the  spirit  of  cosmopolitan 
tolerance,  all  took  a  new  start.  Max  Miiller,  in- 
deed, pronounces  Akbar  the  first  founder  of  a  "com- 
parative study  of  the  religions  of  the  world "  — 
even  anticipating  Chicago  !  Nothing  so  delighted 
him  as  to  assemble  learned  Brahmans,  Mussulmans, 
Zoroastrians,  Jews,  Jesuit   padres,    and   skeptical 


ELIMINATING   THE   TARTAR  ,219 

■philosophers,  and  to  hear  them  argne  with  one 
another.  "■  Gradually,"  says  a  bitter  Mohammedan 
hater  of  his  "  spirit  of  inquiry,  opposed  to  every 
Islamitic  principle,"  — "  gradually  there  grew,  as  the 
outline  on  a  stone,  the  conviction  in  his  heart  that 
there  were  sensible  men  in  all  religions  and  abste- 
mious thinkers."  No  mere  intellectual  critic,  but 
a  man  profoundly  devout  in  heart,  Akbar  finally 
built  up  a  religion  of  his  own,  —  a  combination 
of  all  he  thouo-ht  wisest  and  best  in  Brahmanical 
teaching,  Zoroastrian  fire-worship,  Mohammedan 
morality,  and  Christian  dogma,  even  substituting 
for  the  usual  formula,  "  Bismallah,"  etc.,  of  Islam, 
the  rather  compound  one  of 

"  0  thou  Avhose  names  are  Jesus  and  Christ, 
We  praise  thee :   there  is  no  one  beside  thee,  0  God  !  " 

As  one  reads  the  stoiy  of  Akbar's  attitude 
toward  the  rival  religions,  impossible  it  is,  spite 
of  Max  Miiller's  assertion,  not  to  call  to  mind 
King  Solomon,  and  to  raise  the  historical  query 
whether  the  title  of  first  founder  of  the  study  of 
comparative  religions  does  not  more  fitly  belong 
to  him.  The  cases  are  strikingly  parallel.  The 
old  desert  faith  of  the  Hebrews  had  weakened  ; 
contact  with  Egypt  and  Assyria  had  brought  rival 
religions  into  comparison  ;  equally  excellent  wives 
from  Tyre,  Sidon,  Babylon,  Thebes,  and  Mem- 
phis, had  softened  the  heart  of  the  wisest  of  kings, 
and  rendered  him  tender  toward  their  respective 
creeds ;  and,  besides  all  this,  Solomon  was  himself 
a  man  of  restless  and  subtle  intellect.  Akbar's 
was,  no  doubt,  the  devouter  nature   of   the  two  ] 


220  INDIA 

yet  still  the  renaissance  in  India  and  the  renais- 
sance in  Judaea  were  such  essentially  similar  phe- 
nomena, and  so  equally  bound  up  with  the  individ- 
uality of  two  highly  intellectual  and  widely  married 
Oriental  sovereigns,  that  it  may  not  seem  pre- 
sumptuous to  submit  even  to  a  Max  Miiller  the 
propriety  of  a  reconsideration  of  his  statement. 
Certain  it  is  that  Akbar's  Christian  wife  Mary 
exerted  over  his  life  an  influence  at  once  liber- 
alizing and  exalting,  and  so  inclined  his  heart 
towards  her  creed.  The  subject  at  any  rate  opens 
up  a  novel  chapter  in  the  study  of  the  part  woman 
has  played  in  the  historical  development  of  reli- 
gion. 

In  Agra,  Akbar  the  Great  built  for  his 
glory  and  pleasure  a  gigantic  fortress-palace 
a  mile  and  a  half  in  circuit,  its  massive  crenelated 
walls  seventy  feet  in  height,  entered  on  four  sides 
by  stupendous  gateways,  in  themselves  at  once  forts 
and  sumptuous  palaces.  Within  the  vast  inclos- 
ure  there  is  room  not  merely  for  storehouses 
against  a  siege,  barracks  for  the  soldiery,  dormi- 
tories for  the  retainers  and  troops  of  servants, 
grounds  for  horse-exercise,  sports  and  elephant- 
fights,  but  immense  areas  for  mosques,  audience- 
halls,  gardens,  baths,  zenanas.  For  air  and  fresh- 
ness, along  the  top  of  the  massive  sandstone  walls, 
are  exquisitely  wrought  towers  of  pure  white  mar- 
ble and  ranges  of  apartments  for  noonday  siestas ; 
while  on  the  marble  surface  of  their  level  roofs 
above   stretch  wide  spaces  for  gatherings  in  the 


AGRA  221 

cool  of  the  evening  or  for  lying  out  and  sleep- 
ing under  the  stars.  All  command  broad  views 
over  the  richly  cultivated  country,  the  river  Junnia 
winding  in  great  sweeps  through  the  landscape. 
It  is,  in  fine,  the  Alhambra  of  India,  the  fortress 
for  safety ;  the  audience-halls  for  the  administra- 
tion of  justice  and  the  reception  of  ambassadors ; 
the  mosque  for  the  worship  of  Allah ;  the  zenanas 
for  the  beauties  of  Cashmere,  Persia,  Syria  ;  the 
palaces  for  splendor,  luxur}^,  repose ;  the  gardens, 
fountains,  canals,  and  baths  for  coolness,  perfume, 
murmuring  sounds. 

Apart  from  the  mosques,  the  Saracenic  Moham- 
medan architecture  of  India  has  one  unfailing  char- 
acteristic. It  makes  a  rich,  sensuous  appeal  to 
common  human  nature,  and  requires  for  its  full 
appreciation  no  spiritual  elevation  of  soul.  Every 
man  who,  hot  and  thirsty,  has  felt  the  rapture  of 
a  plunge  into  a  cool  brook  or  of  a  long,  delicious 
draught  from  a  bubbling  spring,  has  in  himself 
the  fundamental  elements  of  sense  and  feelino-  to 
which  this  architecture  and  its  surroundings  are 
addressed.  Every  man,  furthermore,  who  as  he 
walks  by  the  seashore  delights  to  pluck  a  hand- 
ful of  bayberry  leaves  and  eagerly  inhale  their 
aromatic  perfume  ;  every  man  who  on  a  hot  July 
afternoon  feels  the  luxury  of  a  dreamy  siesta  in 
his  hammock,  with  a  delicious  breeze  stealing  over 
him  ;  every  man  who  finds  it  paradise  to  have  his 
inamorata  take  her  guitar  and  sing  soothing  songs 
to  him  while  he  reposes  his  weary  Olympian  brow 
on    a  sofa-cushion,  —  is,  just    in    so  far,  perfectly 


222  INDIA 

capable   of  appreciating  the  aesthetic  sense  of  an 
Akbar  the  Great  or  a  Shah  Jehan,  when  — 

"  In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 
A  stately  pleasure-dome  decree, 
Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  ran 
Through  caverns  measureless  to  man 
Down  to  a  sunless  sea." 

In  India  the  climate  is  tropical.  Air  and  shade 
are  the  primal  requisites.  There  must  be  no  stair- 
cases to  climb.  Apartment  must  succeed  apart- 
ment on  the  same  level.  The  roofs,  too,  must  be 
utilized  for  ample  spaces  for  the  enjoyment  of 
the  starlight  and  the  moonlight  and  the  sweet  sleep 
to  be  had  on  them.  Still  other  airy  buildings  must 
be  set  a-top  these  roofs  for  wider  outlook  or  yet 
more  sequestered  privacy.  Screens  of  openwork 
marble,  cut  in  exquisite  patterns  of  vines  and 
palms  and  lilies  and  pomegranates,  shall  be  the 
sole  walls  of  these  buildings,  that  the  jessamine- 
scented  breezes  may  steal  through  them,  and  the 
brighter  sunlight  be  transfigured  into  a  golden 
twilight,  and  the  moonlight  into  mysterious  dream- 
light. 

Such,  then,  was  the  fairy-land,  the  midsummer- 
night's  dream,  that  Akbar  the  Great  undertook 
to  make  reality  within  the  fort  of  Agra,  and  which 
his  successors,  Jehangir  and  Shah  Jehan,  carried 
to  completeness.  The  yearning  of  Abt  Vogler  to 
arrest  and  make  permanent  the  ravishment  of  his 
manifold  music  there  found  its  genii  to  achieve  the 
task.  The  fullness  of  time  had  come.  Long  be- 
fore had  the  beauty-loving  Saracenic  genius,  seiz- 


INFLUENCE   OF   WOMAN  223 

ing-  upon  the  treasures  of  Greek  and  Koman  archi- 
tecture in  the  East,  developed  out  of  them  bewitch- 
ing architectural  types  suited  to  embody  its  own 
inborn  cravings.  Syria  and  Persia  were  full  of 
master-builders  ;  and  from  Italy,  too,  they  could  be 
drawn  without  stint.  In  India  there  were  trea- 
suries of  gold  and  silver,  and  millions  of  subjects 
to  toil  for  a  pittance.  Over  all  presided  the  un- 
dying genius  of  Greece  in  imperishable  architect- 
ural forms  that  needed  only  modifications  through 
the  Saracenic  arch,  the  extension  of  an  inclined 
piazza  roof  for  shade,  and  the  freer  use  of  grace- 
ful minarets  and  open  cuj^olas,  to  evolve  a  new 
order,  which  for  symmetry,  grace,  and  appeal  to 
the  pleasure-craving,  dreamy  side  of  human  nature 
is  without  rival  in  the  world. 

Even  in  our  own  country,  the  relation 
borne  by  woman  to  architectural  construc- 
tion has  been  made  a  subject  of  grave  comment 
by  philosophic  minds,  —  especially  in  its  bearing 
on  the  multiplication  of  closets  and  corresponding 
shrinkage  of  size  in  the  living  and  sleeping  rooms, 
to  leave  sj)ace  for  the  closets.  In  the  Orient  this 
influence  becomes  still  more  marked.  A  man  with 
three  hundred  wives  requires,  of  course,  a  domes- 
tic establishment  dijfferently  arranged  from  that 
of  a  man  with  only  one.  Take,  for  example,  the 
single  instance  of  adequate  provision  for  bathing. 
Were  there  but  one  little  bath-room  in  so  hot  a 
climate,  and  did  each  several  wife  insist  on  lying 
in  the  tub  half  the  day  and  the  rest  of  the  day  on 


224  INDIA 

a  Persian  rug  beside  it,  it  will  readily  be  seen 
that  serious  domestic  comislications  might  arise. 
Construct,  on  the  other  hand,  immense  marble 
halls,  with  swimming-pools  of  marble  thirty  feet 
long,  and  large  areas  of  marble  floors,  on  which 
could  be  laid  a  hundred  rugs,  whereon  the  beau- 
ties of  India,  Circassia,  and  Syria  might  stretch  out 
and  doze  or  gossip  or  eat  sweetmeats,  then  what 
enhanced  prospects  of  marital  peace  would  at  once 
ensue  !  Inlay  the  marble  walls  of  these  halls  with 
exquisite  designs  in  i)recious  stones,  and  roof  them 
with  delicate  mirror-work  overrun  with  fairy-like 
marble  traceries  of  vines  and  lilies,  and  why  should 
not  all  be  satisfied  with  bathing,  dozing,  telling 
stories,  and  doing  nothing  all  day  long  ? 

Again,  for  an  example  of  the  influence  of  woman 
on  architecture,  take  the  so-called  Jasmine  Tower, 
erected  by  Shah  Jehan  for  his  favorite  sultana. 
It  overhangs  the  wall  of  the  fortress,  and  is  in- 
wrought with  such  indescribable  beauty  of  open- 
work marble  screens  as  to  drive  the  fancy  wild. 
Now  Shah  Jehan  was  extremely  fond  of  playing 
chess  with  his  prime  vizier ;  but,  like  most  Orien- 
tal sovereigns,  he  was  also  fond  of  mitigating  the 
asperities  of  too  protracted  thought.  So,  on  the 
floor  of  the  court  before  the  Jasmine  Tower,  needs 
must  he  have  a  chess-board  constructed  of  marble 
flagging,  each  flag-stone  large  enough  for  a  man 
or  woman  to  stand  on  freely.  Then,  at  a  signal, 
the  requisite  numbers  of  his  wives,  gorgeously  ar- 
rayed as  kings  and  queens  and  bishops  and  knights 
and  pawns,  would  file  out  of   the   zenana,  while, 


THE   OASIS  225 

luxuriously  seated  on  their  divans,  Shall  Jehan 
and  the  vizier  would  direct  with  finger  or  word 
the  complicated  movements  of  the  game  of  living 
chess.  In  this  way  was  taken  off  the  perhaps 
too  severe  intellectual  edge  of  an  otherwise  so 
exacting  pastime. 

Such  little  straws  as  these  must  serve  to  show 
which  way  the  wind  blows  in  the  Mohammedan 
domestic  architecture  of  India ;  and  I  must  leave 
it  to  the  imagination  of  my  readers  to  carry  these 
hints  out  into  all  the  details  of  gardens  and  foun- 
tains and  successive  halls  of  splendor,  and  pools 
and  marble  canals  mirroring  and  repeating  in  their 
transfigured  reflections  the  dream-world  above. 
This  Saracenic  Mohammedan  architecture,  as  I 
have  said  before,  is  the  apotheosis  of  sensuous 
sestheticism.  It  has  no  lift  to  it,  no  ideal  beyond 
what  it  sees  already  perfect.  "  If  paradise  be  any- 
where it  is  here,  here,  here  I "  wrote  Shah  Jehan 
over  one  of  the  portals.  A  man  living  under  such 
conditions  would,  I  should  think,  struggle  fiercely 
never  to  die.  What  could  there  be  to  his  sense- 
restricted  imagination  in  the  vision,  "  Eye  hath 
not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  heart  conceived  the 
things  God  hath  in  store  "  ?  No.  "  If  paradise  be 
anywhere,  it  is  here,  it  is  here  !  " 

In  the  fiery,  sun-blistered  deserts  of  Arabia, 
in  which  Mohammedanism  took  its  rise,  the 
physical  basis  of  all  imaginative  visions  of  the  para- 
dise yearned  after  was  the  oasis.    Paradise,  indeed, 
was  the  oasis  when  the  tongue -parched  wayfarer 


226  INDIA 

struggled,  faint  and  exhausted,  out  of  the  burning 
sands,  and  flung  himself  down  under  the  shade  of 
its  palms  and  mimosas,  and  drank  deep  draughts 
from  its  delicious  springs.  Allah  had  there  done 
his  supremest  creative  feat,  and  revealed  himself 
in  the  highest  to  his  creatures.  What  more  divine 
could  he  bring  to  pass  in  reward  of  the  faithful 
than  to  make  just  this  kind  of  experience  everlast- 
ing,—  with  the  entrancing  addition  of  the  houris? 
Such,  then,  was  the  vision  of  the  celestial  home  ; 
and  the  next  step  was  to  try  to  make  it  come  on 
earth,  even  as  it  lay  awaiting  in  paradise. 

This  primitive  idea  of  the  oasis  has  dominated 
the  mind  of  Mohammedanism  wherever  the  faith 
has  spread ;  and  Saracenic  domestic  and,  I  may 
add,  mortuary  architecture  is  but  its  full  and  final 
flower.  In  it  are  the  original  sense-impressions  of 
the  blissful  change  from  the  glare  of  the  desert  to 
the  shade  of  the  palms  and  the  refreshment  of  the 
springs,  but  raised  to  the  seventh  aesthetic  heaven. 
In  his  infinite  mercy,  had  it  not  pleased  Allah  to 
create  for  the  faithfid  a  substance  called  marble, 
snowy  white  as  his  own  purity;  among  stones,  a 
kind  of  precious  stone  enduring  as  granite  and  yet 
capable  of  being  made  translucent  as  amber,  and 
wreathed  all  over  with  the  most  delicate  traceries 
of  vines  and  flowers  ?  Then,  further,  to  relieve  its 
perhaps  too  great  monotony  of  white,  had  it  not 
equally  plef^sed  Allah  to  create  the  bei-yl,  the  onyx, 
the  jasper,  the  lapis  lazuli,  wherewith  to  inlay  it, 
and  to  assure  delightful  variety  of  hue  and  sheen? 
Still    more,    that    all    suggestion    of    glare    might 


THE   TAJ  MAHAL  227 

utterly  be  removed,  had  not  Allah  caused  to  grow 
the  palm,  the  tamarind,  the  cypress,  the  banyan, 
the  orange,  wherein  to  embower  and  relieve  the 
shining  white,  and,  along  with  these,  made  pure 
crystal  waters  to  lea]?  up  in  fountains,  and  fill  the 
pools  of  courts,  and  reflect  from  the  mirrored  sur- 
face the  porticoes  and  minarets  and  domes,  and 
houris  arrayed  in  robes  of  cashmere  or  unarrayed 
in  aught  but  their  own  surpassing  charms  ? 

Now,  it  is  in  this  ineffable  unity  of  gardens, 
terraces,  canals,  fountains,  minarets,  snow-white 
domes,  that  lie  the  witchery  and  seduction  of 
India's  Saracenic  architecture.  All  is  dissolved 
into  one  melodious  music,  every  object  transfigured 
into  element  of  one  fairy-land.  The  eye  is  fed  with 
gracious  forms,  the  ear  with  murmuring  sounds,  the 
scent  with  delicious  perfumes.  Alternate  sensations 
of  languorous  heat  and  refreshing  coolness,  of  thirst 
and  of  oranges  hanging  down  to  slake  it  with,  of 
invitation  to  rest  with  appeal  to  wander  leisurely 
on,  sensuously  appeal  to  blended  body  and  soul. 

There  are  two  buildings  In  Agra  which  it  is 
considered  a  mark  of  barbarism  not  to  rave 
over,  —  the  one,  the  Pearl  Mosque  within  the  walls 
of  the  fort ;  the  other,  the  Taj  Mahal,  on  the  curv- 
ing bank  of  the  river  Jumna,  a  mile  or  more  away 
from  the  fort.  The  latter  is  the  memorial  tomb 
of  Shah  Jehan's  favorite  wife,  Muntaz  Mahal, 
"  Chosen  of  the  Palace."  Taj  is  but  the  diminu- 
tive, the  pet  name  of  endearment  for  Muntaz,  as 
we  should  say  Nell  for  Ellen. 


228  INDIA 

Now,  in  respect  of  the  first  of  these  two,  the 
Pearl  Mosque,  no  fear  of  aesthetic  excommunication 
will  prevent  my  saying  that  it  suffers  most  severely 
from  the  lack  of  just  that  which  is  the  crowning 
fascination  of  most  Saracenic  buildings.  The  glare 
of  the  desert,  the  fatal  monotony  of  the  unrelieved 
whiteness  of  marble,  the  absence  anywhere  of  the 
oasis,  with  its  springs  and  overshadowing  trees, 
render  it  a  place  almost  intolerable  under  the  sun 
of  India.  Surpassingly  beautiful  are  its  outlines, 
with  its  pillared  aisles,  its  three  snowy  domes,  and 
its  delicately  carved  cloisters  surrounding  the  sides 
of  the  open  court-yard  ;  and  in  the  rosy  flush  of 
early  dawn,  or  under  the  dream-spell  of  moonlight, 
one  might  love  to  linger  there,  but  not  when  the 
sun  is  riding  high  in  the  heavens.  Then  the  direct 
smiting  rays  or  their  equally  blinding  reflections 
pierce  everywhere ;  and  one  can  conceive  of  none 
but  a  half-crazed  fakir,  making  a  merit  of  a  crema- 
tory of  the  living  flesh,  ever  seeking  it  as  a  place 
of  prayer. 

But  of  the  Taj  Mahal,  in  contrast,  what  shall  I 
say?  It  is  by  thousands  of  judges  pronounced  the 
most  beautiful  building  in  the  world ;  but  never  a 
one  of  them  who  has  first  drunk  its  intoxicating 
soma  juice  is  ever  again  competent  to  pass  a  calmly 
reasoned  verdict,  whether  it  is  or  is  not.  Nor  does 
it  make  any  difference  who  beholds  it.  The  most 
ideal  young  American  girl,  the  driest  student  of 
comparative  architecture,  the  most  commonplace 
British  Philistine,  the  emptiest-headed  globe-trotter 
who  has  raked  together  money  enough  to  go  round 


THE   TAJ  MAHAL  229 

the  world  and  return  home  the  same,  only  a  bit 
more  confused  than  he  set  out,  —  all  are  equally 
carried  away,  all  lifted  to  the  seventh  heaven  of 
their  respective  (short  or  long)  celestial  Jacob's 
ladders. 

The  Taj  is  not  a  building.  It  is  an  Arabian 
Night's  dream,  in  which  a  building  plays  a  queenly 
part.  It  is  a  tropical  orchestra,  in  which  earth, 
sky,  grove,  waters,  flowers,  precious  stones,  moon- 
orbed  domes,  snowy  pinnacles,  blend  and  flow  into 
one  Mozart  symphony.  All  along  on  the  way  from 
Calcutta  to  Agra  I  had  seen  alabaster  models  of 
the  Taj,  and  said  to  myself  sadly,  "  Is  that  all  ?  " 
The  models  left  out  only  the  golden  clouds  from 
around  the  sinking  sun,  the  shining  waters  from 
beneath  the  rising  moon,  the  lover's  soul  from  the 
sj^ell  of  his  mistress's  song,  —  only  that,  and  no- 
thing more ! 

One  enters  the  inclosure  of  the  Taj  by  a  superb 
gateway,  through  whose  lofty  arch  he  looks  along 
the  sky,  grove,  and  dome  reflecting  surface  of  a 
marble-paved  canal,  bordered  on  either  side  by  wide 
paths  and  beds  of  flowers  and  flanked  by  lines  of 
dark,  spiry  cypress-trees,  backed  with  groves  on 
either  hand.  In  vista  at  the  end  of  this  magic 
avenue,  and  repeated  in  transfiguration  in  the 
water,  stands  the  Taj.  How  superb  a  setting ! 
The  mai'ble  platform  on  which  it  rests  is  a  square 
three  hundred  and  thirteen  feet  each  way  and 
eighteen  feet  in  height.  From  each  of  the  four 
corners  mounts  high  aloft  an  indescribably  gracef id 
minaret,  relieved   in   its  ascent  by  three  hanging 


230  INDIA 

galleries  and  surmounted  by  the  beautiful  Saracenic 
cupola.  There  in  the  middle  of  the  grand  plat- 
form rises  the  Taj,  itself  like  the  pinnacles,  all  of 
snowy,  exquisitely  carved  marble,  the  finial  of  its 
marble  dome  two  hundred  and  twenty  feet  aloft  in 
the  blue  sky.  Further,  as  one  still  looks  out  from 
the  gateway,  stretch  to  the  right  and  left  the  great 
tropical  gardens,  beautiful  with  palms,  mimosas, 
and  tamarinds,  lighted  up  by  the  splendor  of  the 
plumage  of  darting  paroquets,  and  with  a  glory  of 
scarlet,  purple,  and  gold  in  the  trailing  vines. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  Taj  is  the  most 
beautiful  building  in  the  world  or  not.  I  never 
want  to  know.  If  Euclid  demonstrated  to  me  in 
ten  immutable  axioms  and  ten  immutable  deduc- 
tions from  them  that  it  was  not,  it  would  make  no 
difference.  I  only  know  that  in  its  combination 
with  earth  and  sky  it  presents  the  most  fairy-like 
scene  on  earth.  Thought  is  not :  in  enjoyment  it 
expires. 

I  saw  the  Taj  by  early  morning  light,  by  sunset 
light,  and  by  moonlight,  when  every  trace  of  ma- 
teriality was  so  dissolved  in  ethereal  spirit  that 
it  seemed  as  though  all  material  barriers  were 
melted  away,  and  the  living  here  and  the  living 
there  must  float  together  and  feel  neither  out  of 
sphere.  And  yet  no  glare,  even  of  fiercest  noon- 
day, has  power  to  break  the  poetic  spell.  Peren- 
nial oasis  in  life's  so  frequent  waste,  against  it  ver- 
dure, wellspring  of  delight,  lotus  land  of  dreams, 
no  Libyan  desert  can  prevail.  And  just  as  within 
its  inmost  shrine,  illuminated  not  by  windows,  but 


THE   TAJ  MAHAL  231 

only  through  the  graceful  openwork  sprays  of  vines 
and  flowers  chiseled  in  marble  screens,  the  blaze 
of  the  midday  sunshine  is  transfigured  into  a 
soft,  golden  haze,  so  equally  there  the  harshest 
sounds  are  transformed  into  melodious  music.  Let 
a  strain  be  sung  by  the  most  discordant  voice, 
even  were  it  a  snatch  of  a  simple  song,  and  forth- 
with is  it  taken  up  as  by  a  choir  of  angels  and 
sent  circling  and  circling  through  the  tremulously 
vibrating  vault  above,  sweet  and  jubilant,  as  over 
Bethlehem  the  "Hymn  of  the  Nativity."  No  word 
is  repeated ;  only,  as  it  were,  the  theme  of  the 
musician  is  taken  up  and  revealed  in  its  divine 
intent,  revealed  as  he,  too,  shall  later  hear  it, 
stored  away  and  enriched  in  the  sanctifying  mem- 
ory of  God.  All  seems  imbued  as  by  an  instinct 
of  chaste  purity  that  will  be  sullied  by  nothing 
discordant  or  profane,  but  which  ignores  it,  and 
soars  above  it  into  a  celestial  realm.  Even  the 
sleeping  woman  there,  the  wife  and  mother  who 
died  in  childbirth  pangs,  and  in  tender  memory 
of  whom  all  this  miracle  of  beauty  was  evoked, 
suggests  no  thought  of  pain. 


VII. 

What  more  fitting  preface  to  the  little  I 
shall  have  space  to  say  about  Delhi  than 
the  passionate  cry  of  the  French  savant,  James 
Darmesteter  ?  "  Delhi  the  royal !  Delhi  the  im- 
perial !  Delhi  the  bleeding- !  I  have  had  but  four 
days  to  wander  among  thy  ruins  and  thy  tombs : 
it  will  be  the  eternal  regret  of  my  life.  For  two 
thousand  years  has  the  heart  of  India  beaten 
there,  whatever  the  color  of  the  blood  —  Aryan, 
Turk,  Afghan,  Mogul  —  that  the  waves  of  invasion 
rolled  thither.  Whosoever  would  breathe  with 
one  breath  the  India  of  Brahma  and  the  India  of 
Allah,  let  him  traverse,  stone  by  stone,  the  forty- 
five  square  miles  which  Delhi  in  succession,  along 
the  banks  of  the  Jumna,  has  peopled  with  ruins 
and  phantoms." 

Yes,  the  India  of  Brahma  and  the  India  of 
Allah,  the  awe-imposing  phantoms  of  both  are 
there.  Tliither  Shah  Jehan,  sated  with  the  mag- 
nificence of  Agra,  removed  his  court,  and  built 
a  new  Alhambra,  rivaling  in  splendor  and  luxury 
the  one  he  had  left  behind,  while  all  about  him 
in  the  area  of  forty  square  miles  lay  the  ruins  of 
the  earlier  perished  cities  of  Afghan,  Tartar,  Per- 
sian conquerors,  and  of  the  far-back  Hindu  rulers. 
Ruined  and  deserted  capitols,  tenanted   now  but 


DELHI  233 

by  bats,  owls,  and  fakirs,  are  tlie  historical  land- 
marks of  India,  telling  in  monotony  of  repetition 
the  story  of  the  ravages  and  insane  caprices  of 
tyrannic  and  irresponsible  power  to  which  has  been 
subjected  this  veritable  "  Niobe  of  nations."  Next 
to  the  passion  of  conquest,  the  passion  of  building 
strikes  the  deepest  root  into  the  world's  great 
despots,  —  manifesting  itself  in  all  varieties  of 
ways,  from  rearing  pyramids  of  skulls  with  Timur 
to  rearing  pyramids  of  Gizeh  with  the  Egyptian 
Pharaohs.  The  world  must  hold  in  everlasting 
remembrance  the  virtues  of  such  benefactors  ;  and 
to  this  end,  in  exquisite  irony  of  logic,  one  after 
the  other  they  demolish  the  records  of  the  virtues 
of  their  predecessors,  to  rebuild  with  their  mate- 
rial, only  in  turn  to  have  their  own  demolished 
that  other  phantoms  may  commemorate  their 
imperishable  glory.  Did  Akbar  the  Great  have 
some  premonition  of  this  ironical  smile  in  the 
sleeve  of  Fate,  when  at  Fatehpur-Sikri,  after 
building  a  magnificent  city,  —  now  deserted,  —  in 
remembrance  of  a  great  victory  of  his  grandfather 
Babar,  he  inscribed  over  its  stupendous  gateway : 
"  Isa  (Jesus),  on  whom  be  peace  !  said,  '  The 
world  is  a  bridge ;  pass  over  it,  but  build  no  house 
on  it '"  ? 

Delhi  has  been  called  the  Rome  of  India.  In 
vastness  and  impressiveness  of  ruins  it  is  a  hun- 
dred Romes.  When,  in  comparison,  one  recalls 
the  walls  of  Rome  as  they  exist  to-day,  he  credits 
with  entire  historical  faith  the  story  of  Romulus 
killing  his  brother  Remus  for  the  little  innuendo 


234  INDIA 

implied  in  a  hop,  skip,  and  jump  over  them.  Had 
Remus  tried  the  like  feat  with  the  Cyclopean  walls 
of  Tughlakabad,  one  of  the  abandoned  cities  of 
Delhi,  it  would  have  been  his  own  feelings  that 
felt  hurt  and  not  those  of  Romulus.  No :  here  is 
the  work  of  giants.  Hundred-armed  Briareus,  with 
gangs  of  Titans  under  him  to  quarry  and  heave, 
must  have  taken  the  contract  for  these  stupendous 
towers  and  battlements.  Deserted  now  for  centu- 
ries, blackened  with  age,  shaken  with  earthquakes, 
the  city  once  within  eaten  out  by  the  mordant  tooth 
of  Time,  nothing  left  behind  but  a  vast  crater — how 
they  overwhelm  the  mind,  as,  ant-like,  one  creeps 
along  their  awful  base  !  Then  the  mausoleum  of 
ferocious  old  Tughlak  himself,  "  the  bloody  king," 
outside  the  south  wall  of  the  city,  and  once  sur- 
rounded with  a  lake !  It  looks  an  impregnable 
fortress  in  itself.  So  terrible  his  record  and  so 
dire  the  estimate  of  the  fate  before  him  in  the 
world  to  come,  that  his  successor  piously  purchased 
at  great  expense  written  qviittances  of  all  he  had 
cruelly  outraged  on  earth  and  stored  them  in  an 
iron  chest  at  the  head  of  the  tomb,  to  be  close  at 
hand  against  the  Day  of  Judgment.  But,  even  with 
these  authentic  receipts  in  full,  the  sanguinary  old 
tyrant  seems  to  have  looked  forward  with  small 
relief  to  the  call  of  the  Mohammedan  angel  of  the 
resurrection.  How  he  barricaded  himself  in  with 
gigantic  walls  and  battlements,  as  though  dynamite 
itself  should  never  blow  his  dogged  soul  out  of  its 
fastness,  and  summon  it  before  any  tribunal  short 
of  its  own  ferocious  will ! 


DELHI  235 

Four  miles  from  there,  under  the  shadow  of  the 
superb  five-storied  tower,  the  Kutb  Minar,  one 
comes  upon  another  wilderness  of  Titanic  ruins. 
Each  fresh  conqueror  must  found  a  new  city  to 
perpetuate  his  glory.  Why  should  a  taste  for 
building  have  been  implanted  in  the  heart  by  Allah, 
and  millions  of  cunning  workmen  put  at  one's 
disposal,  but  to  create  something  with  them  that 
shall  add  an  eighth  wonder  to  the  world  ?  Besides, 
is  not  this  the  site  of  the  original  Hindu  city  of 
Dilli,  where  idolaters  have  spent  centuries  in  mak- 
ing all  magnificent  with  temples  ?  Tear  them  down  ! 
Why  go  to  the  rude  quarries  for  stone  when  Allah's 
blaspheming  enemies  have  already  hewn  it  for  the 
faithful  into  walls  and  pillars?  Only  with  divin- 
est  patience  first  mutilate  every  face  of  myriad 
carved  god  or  goddess ;  for  is  it  not  written,  "  Thou 
shalt  not  make  unto  thyself  any  graven  image"? 
Enough  will  then  remain  of  Hindu,  Buddhist,  Jain 
glories  of  architecture  —  first  piously  smitten  hard 
enough  in  the  teeth  to  satisfy  the  sacred  precept  of 
the  law  —  wherewith  to  rear  magnificent  cloisters. 
Then  at  the  end  of  the  vast  court  build  a  stupen- 
dous mosque,  with  five  lofty  Saracenic  arches  open- 
ing up  its  interior,  all  towering  as  high  above 
the  rest  as  Allah  above  the  gods  of  the  infidel. 
But,  to  make  his  divine  supremacy  sure,  to  proclaim 
it  to  sight  for  miles  and  miles  around,  rear  on  high 
the  mighty  Kutb  Minar.  Such  a  tower !  Can  the 
round  world  equal  it?  It  and  Giotto's  in  Flor- 
ence are  the  two  that  utterly  overpeer  all  others. 
Nearly  fifty  feet  in  its  base  diameter  and  rising  to 


236  INDIA 

tlie  height  of  two  hundred  and  forty  feet,  broken  at 
intervals  by  five  beautiful  corbeled  balconies,  the 
first  three  stories  of  red  sandstone  and  the  two 
upper  ones  of  white  marble,  its  superb  shaft  pow- 
erfully incised  with  alternate  angular  and  rounded 
flutings  and  decorated  with  bands  of  inscriptions, 
it  excites  the  mind  with  such  positive  invigoration 
as  to  call  out  literal  shouts  of  admiration.  To  have 
built  it  seems  greater  than  to  have  stormed  Delhi. 

Here  are  but  passing  glimpses  of  two  of  the 
ruined  cities  of  these  forty-five  square  miles  of  his- 
toric stones.  Of  Ferozabad  and  Indrapat  I  cannot 
stop  to  speak,  vast  and  overwhelming  as  they  are 
in  their  lonely  and  massive  desolation.  But  the 
whole  country  around  is  strewn  with  ruins.  Trav- 
elers speak  of  the  profound  impression  left  by  the 
Appian  Way  of  Rome  !  The  tomb  of  Cecilia  Me- 
tella  would  go  unnoticed  here.  There  are  miles  of 
three-domed,  mosque-like  tombs  in  which  it  could 
be  hidden  away  as  a  toy.  Then,  too,  the  exquisite 
beauty  of  many  of  them,  burial-shrines  of  poets, 
saints,  daughters  of  kings,  with  such  pathetic  in- 
scriptions as,  for  example,  this  :  — 

"  Save  the  green  herb,  place  naught  above  my  head  : 
Such  pall  alone  befits  the  lowly  dead." 

Often  they  are  of  purest  white  marble,  inclosed 
by  snowy  openwork  screens,  wrought  in  infinitely 
graceful  carvings  of  vines  and  tendrils. 

All  passes  away,  and  naught  remains.  Pride 
and  glory,  they  are  dust  and  ashes.  "  A  thousand 
years  in  thy  sight  are  but  as  yesterday  when  it  is 
past,  and  as  a  watch  in  the  night."     How  often 


DELHI  237 

we  prate  this  overpowering  thought !  But  not  in 
Delhi.  No  ;  here  we  feel  it,  know  it,  as  everlast- 
ing yea  and  amen.  The  heart  beats  not  in  pulses 
of  seconds,  but  in  pulses  of  centuries.  The  mind 
is  arrested  not  by  the  fleeting  aspects  of  the  hour, 
but  is  swayed  by  the  flow  and  ebb  of  centuries. 
The  verj^  story  of  to-day,  as  we  stand  on  the  spot 
at  Humayan's  giant  tomb,  from  which,  in  the 
Indian  mutiny,  brutal  Hodson  dragged  out  the 
last  trembling  descendants  of  Tamerlane,  and  shot 
them  out  of  hand,  —  what  was  the  thrice-repeated 
ring  of  that  carbine  but  the  thrice-repeated  knell 
of  the  mighty  Mogul  dynasty?  The  mob  of  infu- 
riated Mohammedans,  with  arms  in  their  hands, 
that  hung  around  the  ruffian  trooper  and  his  hun- 
dred mounted  men,  and  never  dared  to  lift  a  hand 
while  the  last  princes  of  their  emperor's  blood,  pit- 
eously  begging  for  their  lives,  were  shot  dead,  — 
what  a  change  from  the  days  when  their  terrible 
ancestor  had  burst  in  like  a  cyclone  from  the  north, 
sweeping  everything  before  him  !  To-day  in  its 
place  stands  Great  Britain's  imperial  dynasty.  It 
needs  but  to  lift  a  finger,  and  from  the  Himalayas 
of  the  north  to  Tuticorin  in  the  south  its  will  is  law. 
But  has  this  fleeting  show  of  power  and  pomp  any 
more  abiding  root  ?  In  Delhi  one  cannot  believe 
it.  Mournfully  on  every  passing  breeze  sighs  the 
strain,  "  Thou  carriest  them  away  as  with  a  flood  : 
they  are  as  a  sleep." 


VIII. 

From  Delhi  to  Jeypore,  the  change  was 
as  great  as  from  the  solemn  movement 
of  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  "  Religio  Medici  "  or  of 
his  chapters  on  Urn-Burial  to  a  comic  opera  of 
Sullivan's.  Stretched  alongside  a  Jeypore  street, 
Boston  Public  Garden  in  tulip-time  would  look 
gray  and  sombre.  Such  a  feast  of  color  in  the 
red,  orange,  green,  blue,  white,  gold  dresses  of 
the  men,  women,  and  children  !  It  was  a  perpet- 
ually revolving  human  kaleidoscope.  One  did  not 
so  much  as  have  to  turn  it ;  it  turned  itself.  Even 
the  elephants  had  caught  the  color  infection.  En- 
tirely apart  from  their  splendid  trappings,  their 
heads  and  trunks  were  painted  in  charming  ara- 
besques. Nor,  considering  the  fact  that  an  ele- 
phant is  quite  as  much  a  colossal  monument  of 
architecture  as  he  is  a  moving  quadruped,  did  this 
decoration  seem  any  more  out  of  place  than  on  the 
front  of  a  temple. 

Then,  too,  how  kind  the  people  of  Jeypore  ! 
At  least  two  splendid  public  wedding  processions 
did  they  extemporize  for  our  sole  benefit.  Oh, 
the  contrast  from  crawling  into  a  dozen  black 
hacks,  then  closing  the  blinds,  and  driving  to  a 
roped-in  church,  as  is  the  mournful  marital  custom 


JEYPORE  239 

in  America !  No ;  marriage  was  never  intended 
for  a  selfish  private  affair  between  a  sequestered 
man  and  woman.  It  should  be  celebrated  out- 
doors in  brilliant  sunshine,  and  always  with  the 
accompaniment  of  elephants !  Without  elephants 
what  union  can  ever  hope  to  prove  permanently 
happy ! 

One  of  the  processions  we  witnessed  was  of  a 
promising  little  boy  of  eleven  and  a  bride  presum- 
ably of  seven,  though  her  we  were  not  permitted 
to  see.  But  as  the  boy  husband  had  most  likely 
scarcely  set  eyes  on  her  himself,  we  could  not,  as 
total  strangers,  feel  seriously  aggrieved.  It  was 
a  jjleasant  feature  of  the  cortege  that  the  invited 
guests  were  for  the  most  part  lovely  children,  in 
order,  I  take  it,  that  the  company  might  not  be 
too  grown-up  for  the  miniature  bridegroom.  First, 
there  came  a  huge  scarlet-and-gold-caparisoned  ele- 
phant, with  a  celestial  troop  of  children  high  aloft 
in  the  howdah.  Next  succeeded  carriage  after  car- 
riage filled  with  equally  ravishing-looking  children. 
Then  mamma  and  her  older  daughters,  with  no- 
thing to  detract  from  their  Oriental  beauty  but  the 
jewels  in  their  noses,  —  worse  misplaced  there  than 
jewels  in  the  head  of  a  toad,  even  though  the  Re- 
vised Version  will  insist  that  it  was  a  nose-ring  and 
not  an  ear-ring  that  Isaac  bestowed  on  Rebecca  in 
the  effusion  of  his  romantic  love.  Then  a  caval- 
cade of  led  horses,  resplendent  with  cloths  thick-set 
with  gold  or  silver  bosses,  and  on  each  horse  the 
perfect  picture  of  a  little  Oriental  prince  or  prin- 
cess of  from  six  to  ten  years  old.     What  followed 


240  INDIA 

next  had  some  symbolical  meaning  whieli  I  did  not 
understand.  Two  wiry,  active  men,  in  red  from 
head  to  foot,  kept  leaping  and  slashing  harmlessly 
at  each  other  with  long  curved  knives.  Perhaps 
the  occult  idea  was  that  evil  would  surely  come 
should  the  happy  couple  ever  draw  on  each  other 
that  sharpest  of  all  edged  knives  —  a  railing  tongue. 
But  the  boy  husband  himself  I  Horse  and  he 
were  all  of  shining  gold,  while  long  gold  tassels 
hung  down  over  his  face,  to  hide,  I  suppose,  his 
too  tumultuous  feelings.  The  rear  was  brought 
up  by  a  troop  of  singing,  dancing  girls,  literally 
with  "rings  on  their  fingers  and  bells  on  their 
toes; "  while,  to  impart  due  solemnity  to  the  close, 
a  final  elephant,  grave  as  a  judge  on  the  bench, 
rolled  ponderously  along. 

Certainly,  it  was  a  bit  sad  to  reflect  that,  should 
the  pretty  boy  husband  of  eleven  chance  to  die  at 
the  age  of  twelve,  the  poor  little  bride  of  eight 
could  never  remarry,  but  must  end  her  days  a  de- 
spised, maltreated  widow,  at  the  mercy  of  a  tyrant 
mother-in-law.  While  in  America  mothers-in-law 
are  often  found  the  tenderest  and  most  self-sacrifi- 
cing of  women,  in  India  there  is  to  the  young  widow 
no  such  name  of  terror.  In  many  a  case  in  by- 
gone days  even  Sati,  or  widow-burning,  was  not  a 
leap  out  of  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire,  but  out  of 
fifty  years  of  frying-pan,  held  over  the  coals  by 
a  remorseless  mother-in-law,  into  flames  that  in- 
volved but  ten  minutes  of  agony,  and  all  was  stilled 
forever. 


AMBER  241 

The  Maharajah  o£  Jeypore  has  the  repu- 
tation of  being  very  polite  to  strangers. 
Certainly  he  was  to  my  friend  and  me,  fairly 
overwhelming  our  sensibilities  by  sending  a  gi- 
gantic elephant  to  take  us  to  Amber,  a  ruined 
city  several  miles  away  on  the  mountain  side. 
No  vulgar  onmibns  elephant  for  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry,  this  !  but  the  Oiieutal  equivalent  of  a  di- 
rector's private  Pullman  car  all  to  ourselves,  — 
we  monarchs  of  all  we  surveyed,  which  seemed  a 
quarter  of  an  acre  when  we  got  on  the  animal's 
back.  Then  the  gracious  condescension  with  which, 
on  seeing  how  small  we  were,  the  lowly  minded 
mammoth  went  down  on  all  fours,  and  suffered  a 
ladder  to  be  placed  against  his  side !  Many  the 
carved  relief  I  had  seen  on  Hindu  temples  of  a 
midget  of  a  man  apparently  worshiping  an  ele- 
phant, but  this  absolute  reversal  of  the  scene  in 
the  worship  of  the  midget  by  the  elephant  was  a 
lesson  in  humility  time  will  never  dislodge.  True, 
when  he  got  up  it  felt  for  a  moment  earthquaky ; 
but  can  it  rationally  be  expected  that  a  two-story 
house,  with  a  pillar  at  each  corner  for  a  leg,  shall 
rise  from  its  knees  without  somewhat  discomposing 
the  feelings  of  two  quiet  gentlemen  in  the  second 
story  ? 

It  was  a  glorious  ride  the  self -abnegating  elephant 
gave  us.  Though  he  had  been  over  the  ground  a 
hundred  times  himseK,  he  knew  it  was  all  fresh  to 
us,  and  never  for  a  moment  slighted  the  scenery  by 
departure  from  the  judicial  dignity  of  his  walk. 
Amber  lies  on  a  slope  of  the  mountain  side,  its  for- 


242  INDIA 

tifications  picturesquely  rooted  on  a  rocky  base 
reflected  in  a  lake  below.  There,  from  the  days 
of  Ptolemy,  and  how  much  farther  back  no  man 
knows,  had  stood  the  capital  of  Jeypore,  rich  in 
multitudinous  palaces  and  still  more  midtitudinous 
temples  and  tombs,  until  in  1728  the  site  of  the 
capital  was  removed  six  miles  away  to  the  level 
plain.  The  superb  palaces  of  the  Maharajah  are 
still  preserved  in  their  former  glory,  while  every- 
thing else  has  been  suffered  to  fall  into  ruins.  Any 
attempt  to  describe  these  palaces  would  be  only 
to  try  to  do  again  what  was  vainly  tried  for  those 
in  Agra.  Enough  that  here  again  was  the  acme 
of  the  aesthetic  Mohammedan  paradise,  a  few  short 
years  of  which  one  would  think  would  suffice  to 
reduce  the  Archangel  Michael  to  a  sensual  imbe- 
cile. Cato  himself,  had  he  come  to  live  here  at 
eighty,  would  have  become  a  warning  to  all  young 
men  before  he  had  reached  the  age  of  eighty- 
four. 

The  most  impressive  sight  of  all,  however,  was 
to  look  off  from  the  level  marble  roofs  of  the 
palaces  over  the  ruined  city.  Fifty  Pompeiis 
could  not  leave  an  equal  impression  of  majestic 
desolation.  Ruins  become,  as  a  rule,  the  haunts 
of  bats  and  owls.  In  India  they  become  also  the 
haunts  of  fakirs,  —  naked,  covered  with  dirt,  muti- 
lated with  austerities,  their  matted  hair  hanging 
down  to  their  loins.  Extremes  meet ;  and  the 
natural  reaction  from  the  Mohammedan  paradise 
is  the  brooding,  self-torturing  fakir,  face  to  face 
with  the  emptiness,  dust,  and  ashes  of  all  earthly 


AMBER  243 

glory.  Plere  in  Amber  is  before  his  eyes  a  per- 
petual sermon  from  the  text,  Sic  trcoisit,  which  the 
comment  of  the  most  eloquent  preacher  could  only 
serve  to  weaken. 

Were  I  a  fakir,  I  would  live  in  Amber  as  surely 
as,  had  I  been  a  sculptor  in  the  palmy  days  of 
Greece,  I  woidd  have  gone  to  Athens.  No  scen- 
ery of  earth,  luxurious  landscape,  arid  waste,  wreck 
of  by-gone  glory,  is  ever  deeply  interpreted  to  the 
feeling  apart  from  living  presences,  animal  or  hu- 
man. What  vultures  are  to  the  Parsee  burial- 
tower,  or  jackals  to  the  ruined  porticoes  of  Pal- 
myra, such  are  fakirs  to  an  abandoned  Indian 
city.  Already  had  I  become  acquainted  with,  seen, 
handled,  smelled,  and  explored  with  every  sense 
the  genuine  fakir,  —  whole  troops  of  them  at  once. 
In  CawTipore  an  intelligent  missionary  had  given 
me  free  introduction  to  large  groups  of  them,  and 
furnished  me  in  the  flesh  the  most  living  commen- 
tary on  the  letters  of  St.  Jerome  I  had  ever  read. 
Naked  but  for  an  iron  chain  around  their  loins, 
perpetually  throwing  dust  over  their  grimy  bodies, 
their  hair  like  strands  of  tarry  rope  -  yarn,  half 
idiotic,  stupefied  with  hhang  to  help  on  religious 
vision,  —  so  melancholy  a  spectacle  of  mental  de- 
gradation I  never  saw  outside  an  insane  asylum. 
And  yet  just  such  a  spectacle  as  this  —  minus  the 
hhang ^  I  doubt  not  —  was  for  many  years,  before  he 
broke  loose  from  asceticism,  and  before  his  interior 
illumination,  the  world-saviour,  Sakya  Muni,  the 
Buddha  of  countless  millions.  Singularly  enough, 
I  saw  at  the  same  time  a  Christian  convert,  a  man 


244  INDIA 

of  thirty,  with  wonderfully  beautiful  eyes  and  a 
radiant  glow  of  love  in  liis  face,  who  had'  himself 
for  many  years  been  a  fakir,  and  at  last  found  his 
enlightenment  under  the  sacred  bho-tree  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Jesus.  In  two  so  utterly  different  worlds 
had  he  lived,  and  so  vivid  was  his  analj'sis  of  the 
mental  states  of  each,  that  a  long  talk  with  him 
gave  me  more  insight  into  the  soul  experiences 
of  Sakya  Muni  than  all  the  books  I  have  ever 
read. 

The  professional  tramp  in  America  and  the  pro- 
fessional tramp  in  India,  the  one  secular,  the  other 
sacred,  what  a  study  in  human  nature  to  compare 
the  two  I  So  unlike  and  yet  so  like  !  Each,  in 
sheer  physical  inertia,  seeks  Nirvana,  the  Nirvana 
of  deliverance  from  the  moil  and  strain  of  life ;  the 
one  to  invite  it  with  vagabond  society,  lewd  stories, 
whiskey,  tobacco,  and  stolen  freight-car  rides  to 
sunny  climes  in  winter  and  cooler  ones  in  summer; 
the  other,  in  equal  abnegation  of  every  social  duty, 
with  opium-dreams,  and  vague  reveries  of  a  super- 
nally  quietistic  infinite,  lapsed  in  immutable  siesta. 
Each  testifies  alike  to  his  pessimistic  creed  —  the 
one  reasoned,  the  other  unreasoned  —  that  this 
world  of  trouble  exists  but  to  be  renounced.  Yet 
the  American  type  is  despised,  brutally  arrested, 
and  set  to  breaking  stone  for  the  highways,  while 
the  Hindu  is  venerated  as  having  chosen  the  better 
part.  Nothing  can  more  forcibly  emphasize  the 
contrast  between  an  industrial  civilization  like  oui'S 
and  a  reverie-bovnid,  supernaturally  overpowered 
civilization   like   that   of   India.     Yet  of  the  two 


MT.  ABU  245 

tramp  types,  give  me  the  Hindu !     From  our  own 
we  can  hope  no  Buddha. 

From  Jeypore  we  journeyed  on  to  Mt.  Abu, 
to  visit  there  the  famous  Jain  temples.  The 
ride  of  seventeen  miles  from  the  station  is  by  jin- 
rikisha,  with  six  coolie  power  to  propel  the  con- 
templative man  inside.  Not  the  "  weeping  phi- 
losopher "  himself  could  have  taken  that  ride 
without  all  along  making  the  rocks  ring  with 
peals  of  laughter.  Oh,  the  monkeys  in  the  trees ! 
The  blessing  of  Sancho  Panza  on  him  who  first 
invented  them !  A  man  of  one  language,  said 
Goethe,  is  a  man  of  no  language.  Equally,  the 
man  who  has  never  seen  the  monkey  but  in  a  cage 
has  never  seen  the  monkey.  As  the  rose  is  naught 
without  its  setting  of  green  leaves  and  coruscat- 
ing dewdrops,  so  is  the  monkey  naught  without 
cliffs  and  trees  to  furnish  him  with  spring-boards 
and  natural  flying  trapezes  for  his  splendid  evolu- 
tions. 

The  peculiar  species  that  so  kindly  turned  out 
to  beguile  with  their  antics  the  tedium  of  our 
ascent  of  the  mountain  were  about  three  feet  in 
height,  ashen-gray  in  color,  with  a  three-foot  tail, 
white  hair  and  beard,  and  a  face  as  black  as  char- 
coal. To  come  suddenly  on  a  group  of  a  dozen 
or  more  of  them,  seated  aloft  on  an  acacia-tree 
eagerly  eating  the  pods,  and  then  to  raise  a  shout, 
produces  a  scene  that  beggars  all  descrijition.  In 
an  instant  tlie  whole  tree  is  all  a-quiver  with  the 
rattling  pods,  while  one  detachment  of  the  mon- 


246  INDIA 

keys  scampers  like  mad  to  the  tips  of  the  branches 
and  swings  off  in  magnificent  leaps  of  twenty  or 
thirty  feet  to  the  branches  of  neighboring  trees, 
and  another  makes  headlong  dives  into  the  thick- 
ets below.  The  most  diverting  sight  of  all  is  to 
watch  the  mother  monkeys,  their  little  coal-black 
babies  clinging  by  all  fonr  hands  to  the  fnr  on  the 
maternal  stomach,  thus  leaving  mamma  free  play 
of  all  her  limbs  for  the  execution  of  the  most  be- 
wildering leaps.  For  an  emergency  —  say  a  house 
a-fire  and  a  natural  desire  on  the  maternal  part  to 
grab  up  as  many  silver  spoons  as  possible  before 
taking  flight  —  monkey  babies  understand  better 
how  to  keep  out  of  the  way  than  the  most  highly 
evolved  of  human  babies. 

I  have  introduced  this  monkey  episode,  and  es- 
pecially the  latter  part  of  it,  not  in  a  spirit  of  tri- 
fling, but  for  its  serious  architectural  and,  I  may 
add,  theological  bearing  on  the  immediate  object 
we  have  in  view.  We  are  ascending  Mt.  Abu  to 
see  and  interpret  the  famous  Jain  temples  there. 
In  their  infinite  elaboration  of  carvings  of  figures, 
animal  and  human,  they  present  what  I  might 
fitly  call  an  opium  or  hasheesh  delirium  of  sym- 
bolism. Nothing  stands  for  what  it  is,  from  the 
wing  of  a  butterfly  to  the  trunk  of  an  elephant, 
but  ever  and  always  as  suggestion  of  some  un- 
derlying mystic  meaning.  Fortunately,  it  had  so 
happened  that  only  a  few  days  before  I  had  been 
reading  the  record  of  a  controversy  which  took 
place  ages  ago  between  two  rival  Hindu  sects. 
It  was  on  the  world-old  subject  of  grace  and  free- 


MT.  ABU  247 

will,  so  familiar  to  us  all  along  from  tlie  days 
of  St.  Augustine.  The  Hindu  champion  of  pure 
grace  argued  in  a  style  that  would  have  drawn 
applause  from  Jonathan  Edwards.  To  man  was 
allowed  no  single  initiative  in  the  work  of  his  sal- 
vation :  desire,  will,  act,  all  were  outright  work  of 
God  in  him.  What,  however,  was  the  crowning, 
triumphant  illustration  of  the  relation  of  the  soul 
to  Deity  which  the  Hindu  theologian  employed  ? 
Precisely  the  one  I  had  just  been  witnessing  with 
my  own  eyes  in  the  relation  of  the  baby  monkey 
to  his  mother.  The  baby  monkey,  he  argued,  sim- 
ply clings  by  an  instinctive  act  of  faith  to  his  mo- 
ther, while  she  bears  him  safely  over  dizzy  preci- 
pices, and  rescues  him  from  peril  by  flying  leaps 
from  tree  to  tree.  But  is  not  this  clinging  the  in- 
dividual act  of  a  free  agent?  the  caviler  might  ask. 
No,  responds  the  profounder  theologian,  it  is  all 
free  grace.  The  mother  eats  for  him,  drinks  for 
him,  assimilates  for  him,  and  through  her  milk 
pours  into  him  instinct,  desire,  strength.  Cut  off 
from  this  fountain-head,  he  would  at  once  be  re- 
solved into  the  nothingness  of  nothingness.  The 
whole  spectacle,  went  on  the  devout  controversial- 
ist, is  a  piece  of  pure  symbolism,  enacted  before 
man's  eyes  as  he  wanders  in  the  woods,  to  reveal 
to  him  the  interior  relation  of  the  soul  to  God. 
Would,  then,  the  Occidental  mind  ever  hope  to 
penetrate  into  the  inner  shrine  of  Hindu  mystic 
theology,  at  a  glance  it  becomes  clear  how  abso- 
lutely necessary  it  is  to  learn  to  take  the  monkey 
seriously ! 


248  INDIA 

To  all  this,  the  ordinary  ciit-and-dried,  totally 
unimaginative  Yankee  tourist  is  as  blind  as  a  bat. 
On  entering  a  Hindu  temple,  the  first  carving 
that  arrests  his  eye  is,  perhaps,  precisely  that  of 
a  mother  monkey  leaping  across  an  abyss  with 
her  baby  monkey  tight  a-hold  of  the  hair  of  her 
stomach ;  and  forthwith  he  goes  into  fits  of  laugh- 
ter. A  precious  lot  these  Hindus,  he  says,  to  let  a 
graceless  scamp  of  a  stone-carver  cut  such  monkey- 
shines  as  this  in  the  house  of  God !  Little  he 
dreams  that  in  this  monkey-shine,  as  he  calls  it, 
the  devout  Hindu  beside  him  is  adoring  a  most 
touching  symbol  of  the  free  grace  of  God  safely 
bearing  the  soul  of  man  across  the  abyss  of  sin. 
The  Yankee  might  argue  that  the  Hindu  was  lack- 
ing in  sense  of  humor.  The  Hindu  would  retort 
that  the  Yankee  lived  but  on  the  surface,  and  was 
devoid  of  all  deeper  insight  into  the  symbolic  mean- 
ing of  the  All. 

Anyhow,  I  have  used  this  long  illustration  sim- 
ply to  strike  the  keynote  as  to  the  only  way  in 
which  the  Western  mind  can  ever  learn  to  inter- 
pret sympathetically  a  Hindu  temple  or  to  see  in 
it  anything  other  than  a  kind  of  menagerie  sud- 
denly let  loose  by  an  earthquake.  In  their  orna- 
mentation the  Mt.  Abu  temples  are,  as  I  have 
said,  a  veritable  hasheesh  delirium  of  symbolism. 
Beautifully  situated  in  a  vast  mountain  crater, 
four  thousand  feet  high  at  its  level,  and  sur- 
rounded by  picturesque  mountains,  they  seem  lit- 
erally out  of  the  world.  So  they  are,  and  so  they 
always  have  been,  only  that  for  centuries  on  cen- 


MT.  ABU  249 

turies  countless  thousands  of  pilgrims  have  visited 
them.  Dating  back,  the  older  of  them  to  1032 
A.  D.  and  the  newer  to  1197,  and  constructed  in 
their  cloisters  and  shrines  of  white  marble  that 
now  has  the  color  of  ivory,  one  marvels  at  their 
state  of  preservation.  The  older  temples  are  sim- 
pler in  their  style,  and  so,  to  my  eye,  far  more 
beautiful ;  but  in  the  newer  is  witnessed  the  per- 
sistent tendency  of  the  Hindu  to  lose  all  simplicity 
of  form  in  rampant  symbolism.  Just  as  in  the  for- 
ests of  India  when  a  noble  tree  falls,  a  stately  col- 
umn in  itself,  it  is  forthwith  buried  out  of  recogni- 
tion in  ferns,  cactuses,  orchids,  and  pepel  vines,  so 
has  it  been  with  the  history  of  Hindu  architecture. 
The  cloisters  here  are  set  three-aisle  deep  with  pil- 
lars ;  and  every  pillar  and  every  bay  above  and 
every  doorway  to  the  successive  shrines  are  wrought 
with  such  a  wilderness  of  figures  that  the  w^orld 
does  not  seem  old  enough  to  have  allowed  time  to 
carve  them.  So  with  the  pillars-set  court-yard,  so 
with  the  temple  itself.  The  wildest  hallucinations 
of  fever  dreams  never  take  on  such  multitudinous 
and  fantastic  shapes. 

Truly,  nowhere  so  much  as  in  its  architecture 
does  the  inmost  spirit  of  a  j^eople  so  incarnate,  so 
materialize  itself.  Even  more  than  in  a  Hindu 
epic  does  the  mind  of  Hindu  India  reveal  itself  in 
the  temple.  There  it  stands  all  at  once  before  the 
eye,  the  Ramayana,  the  Mahabharata,  petrified  — 
nay,  rather,  spii'ituallj'^  arrested  —  in  stone. 

Is  all  this  beautiful?  Fantastic  certainly,  his- 
torically impressive  certainly,  ushering,  as  it  does, 


250  INDIA 

the  mincl  into  a  realm  thus  arrested  in  stone,  whose 
imagery  never  before  coursed  through  a  Western 
brain  but  in  the  delirium  of  fever.  How  simple  to 
us  looks  the  world,  its  genera  and  species  of  trees, 
birds,  reptiles,  and  beasts  dominated  by  our  scien- 
tific categories  and  reduced  to  an  order  so  easily 
and  yet  so  shallowly  grasped !  Not  a  little  boy 
with  us  who  cannot  resolve  it  all  into  mineral, 
vegetable,  and  animal.  But  to  the  Hindu  what 
a  mystery,  what  a  phantasmagoria,  what  a  cloud 
dissolution  of  form  into  form,  what  an  all  and  no- 
thing, what  a  play  of  illusion  where  nothing  is 
but  what  is  not !  Thence,  what  a  world  of  sym- 
bols from  serpent  and  tiger,  from  ant  and  elephant, 
from  fly  and  hawk,  from  burrowing  mole  and  cliff- 
scaling  goat,  to  express  its  multitudinous  infinity  ! 
Thence,  what  a  bewilderment  of  deities  to  tell 
the  story  of  the  sources  of  all  its  terror  and 
peace,  its  beauty  and  hideousness,  its  harvests  and 
pestilences,  its  devastating  passions  and  refuges  of 
prayer ! 

Yet,  it  helps  one  to  be  plunged  into  the  abysses 
of  such  a  world.  It  awes  and  deepens  him.  It 
dissolves  away  the  hard  and  fast  outlines  of  the 
finite.  Spite  of  the  little  of  the  symbolic  enigma 
he  can  interpret,  he  feels  in  the  presence  of  a  uni- 
verse freighted  with  occult  meaning,  in  contrast 
with  which  how  literal  and  prosaic  the  world  in 
which  too  habitually  he  dwells !  Still,  here  the 
whole  process  has  been  so  deliriously  overwrought ! 
Plainly  in  such  wanton  abnegation  of  all  law  of 
limit  has  the  line  of  sanity  been  passed.     Imagina- 


AHMEDABAD  251 

tion  has  grown  monomaniac.  The  muse  of  inspira- 
tion has  been  nurtured,  not  on  nectar  and  aniLrosia, 
but  on  hasheesh.  As  with  all  Hindu  literature 
and  philosophy,  —  an  epoch  in  the  life  of  every 
man  when  first  he  drinks  the  soma  juice  of  its 
intoxication  and  is  made  to  feel  how  no  one  can 
be  truly  sane  till  first  he  has  become  insane,  —  so 
equally  is  it  with  the  purely  Hindu  architecture. 
Structure  is  buried  out  of  sight  by  accessory,  unity 
sacrificed  to  lawless  multiijlicity,  the  Pantheon 
transformed  into  the  pandemonium. 

A  great  deal,  however,  is  to  be  seen  in  In- 
dia of  what  may  strictly  be  called  Hindu 
architecture  which  is  yet  free  from  the  reproach 
of  the  symbolic  hallucination  characteristic  of  the 
temples.  But  it  is  work  done  under  the  control  of 
their  earlier  Mohammedan  masters,  men  dominated 
by  the  severer  and  simpler  taste  of  Semitic  doc- 
trine and  ideals.  Under  the  Sultans  of  Gujarat, 
in  Ahmedabad,  —  a  city  visited  by  few  Europeans, 
but  which  for  wealth  of  architectural  beauty  ranks 
certainly  next  to  Agra  and  Delhi,  —  legions  of 
Hindu  architects  and  armies  of  native  workmen 
were  set  to  work  in  the  construction  of  one  of  the 
most  magnificent  capitals  in  the  world.  But  the 
hand  of  the  Arab  prophet  was  laid  sternly  on  their 
shoulders.  "  Look  ye  !  no  graven  image  or  like- 
ness of  any  thing  that  is  in  heaven  above  or  on 
earth  beneath  or  in  the  waters  underneath.  Flow- 
ers, yes,  and  trailing  vines,  arabesques,  graceful  as 
ye  can  make  them !     But  idols  none  !  " 


252  INDIA 

Historically  impressive  is  it  to  see  the  law  of  one 
great  ethnical  faith  thus  laid  in  stern  restriction  on 
the  deepest-seated  instinct  of  another,  and  to  note 
the  architectural  result.  Cut  off  at  a  stroke  from 
all  his  pandemonium  of  gods  and  devils,  from  all 
his  tangled  overgrowth  of  symbolic  bats  and  owls, 
the  genius  of  the  Hindu  architect  achieved  crea- 
tions of  beauty  that  proved  how  his  need  of  needs 
is  the  authoritative  imposition  of  some  sane  law  of 
reason  and  law  of  limit  on  the  Saturnalia  of  im- 
agination. The  buildings  he  erected  for  his  Mo- 
hammedan masters  are  mainly  tombs,  mosques,  and 
marvelous  underground  structures  for  the  storage 
of  water,  structures  acres  in  extent  and  built  gal- 
lery on  gallery  of  pillared  stories.  But  how  noble 
in  construction,  how  exquisite  in  ornamentation ! 
As  for  the  memorial  tombs,  such  temples  in  them- 
selves, it  would  be  peace  in  dying  to  think  of  being 
laid  to  rest  in  a  scene  of  such  tranquil,  cheerful 
beaut3^ 

As  one  wanders  around  amidst  all  this  architect- 
ural fascination  in  Ahmedabad,  what  a  symbol  is 
before  the  eyes  both  of  the  fate  and  of  the  deep- 
est-rooted need  of  this  Hindu  people  !  It  is  the 
Hamlet  of  the  nations,  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale 
cast  of  thought,  yet  so  attractive,  so  profound,  so 
pathetic  in  its  incapacity  for  action.  A  thousand 
years  before  our  era,  the  plummet  of  its  thought 
had  sounded  the  deepest  abysses  in  the  ocean  of 
speculation,  yet  how  impotent  to-day  to  guide  itself 
were  it  left  alone  !  Its  Mohammedan  rulers  taught 
it  many  a  lesson  of  practical  administration  and 


AHMEDABAD  253 

regard  for  material  realities,  albeit  tliey  wrought 
such  havoc  with  their  rapacity  and  sensuality,  and 
in  deoradino;  the  former  hig-her  estate  of  woman 
laid  the  hand  of  pollution  on  the  most  saci'ed  re- 
lation of  society.  Then,  too,  its  Mohammedan  fel- 
low-subjects set  the  example  at  least  of  a  simpler 
faith  and  of  a  more  practical  and  self-regulated 
life.  But  the  two  races  mixed  no  more  than  oil 
and  water. 

To-day  England  rules,  and  has  brought  to  bear 
upon  India  the  stupendous  apparatus  of  Western 
thought  and  science.  Railroads  have  been  built 
and  canals  dug,  manufactures  established,  famines 
largely  stopped,  population  immensely  increased. 
Hospitals  have  been  founded,  and  schools  and  uni- 
versities endowed,  all  based  on  recognition  of  hu- 
man control  of  the  unchanging  laws  of  nature. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  have  been  trained  in  the 
iron  school  of  military  discipline.  The  Hindu 
youth  have  flocked  into  the  colleges,  bringing  their 
subtle  intellectual  acumen  to  deal  with  all  the  ques- 
tions of  European  literature,  jurisprudence,  phi- 
losophy, and  science.  Thus,  no  such  range  and 
depth  of  influence  has  ever  been  exerted  before. 
Will  it  serve  as  a  make-weight  to  the  unbridled 
imagination  of  India  ?  Will  it  lead  on  to  the  most 
deep-seated  of  all  the  needed  reforms  of  India,  the 
education  and  elevation  of  woman  ?  Ah  !  happy 
people,  did  they  but  know  it,  in  being  under  the 
sway  of  the  one  nation  of  the  world  that  can  help 
the<n,  an  Aryan  people  like  themselves,  the  first 
to  recognize  the  depth  and  beauty  of  their  highest 


254  INDIA 

achievement  in  literature,  philosophy,  theology,  yet 
seeing  with  absolute  clearness,  and  alone  able  to 
supply,  just  what  as  a  nation  they  perish  for  the 
lack  of. 


EGYPT 
I. 

As  the  ever-varying  diorama  of  a  journey 
around  the  world  keeps  unrolling  itself 
before  the  eye,  Goethe's  saying,  "  Wouldst  thou 
know  the  soul  of  a  poet,  visit  the  land  of  his 
birth,"  makes  an  increasingly  vivid  impression. 
So  it  proves  with  everything  one  had  previously 
thought  to  get  out  of  books  alone.  The  first 
Oriental  woman,  prostrating  herself  and  touching 
the  ground  before  one  with  her  forehead  as  in  the 
presence  of  a  superior  being,  teaches  more  history 
in  a  single  sensation  than  can  be  learned  from  all 
John  Stuart  Mill's  voliune  on  the  Subjection  of 
Woman.  The  first  experience  of  getting  inextri- 
cably tied  up  in  a  network  of  trailing  vines,  with 
a  general  dank  smell  of  orchids  and  a  haunting 
suspicion  of  snakes  and  tigers,  reveals  more  of  the 
tropical  jungle  than  all  Wallace,  Darwin,  and 
Kipling  have  written.  So  with  the  feel  of  the 
swarming  millions  of  Asia  at  one's  first  contact 
with  Canton's  river  population  or  with  the  dense 
masses  of  pilgrims  in  Benares. 

Equally  true  does  all  this  hold  of  the  Desert,  the 
indispensable  mental  preparation  for  getting  in 
touch  with  Egypt.     To  know  it,  you  must  wade 


256  EGYPT 

knee-deep  in  its  sand,  be  blinded  with  its  glare, 
feel  your  cheeks  tingle  with  the  blowing  silex 
grains,  breathe  sand,  and  grit  it  between  your 
teeth.  Then  all  at  once  you  become  intimately  at 
home  with  the  habitat  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Re- 
becca, of  Moses  and  the  Hebrews,  of  Mohammed 
and  Ayesha,  and  last,  but  not  least,  of  the  camel, 
—  all  equally  natural  products  of  the  desert,  all  as 
much  indebted  to  it  for  their  university  training  as 
are  the  patterns  cut  into  our  decanters  and  wine- 
glasses to  the  fiercely  flying  atoms  of  the  sand-blast 
tool.  For  ages  has  the  desert,  with  its  cyclone- 
driven  sands,  been,  in  the  hand  of  the  Almighty, 
an  irresistible  historical  etching -needle,  cutting 
deep  and  joersistent  ideals  and  passionate  faiths 
into  the  very  brain  substance  of  whole  races. 

As  far  back  as  when  he  first  sails  into  the  savage 
jaws  of  the  harbor  of  Aden  on  the  southwestern 
extremity  of  Arabia,  Egypt  begins  to  stamp  its 
first  vital  impression  on  the  mind  of  the  thoughtful 
traveler  on  his  way  by  the  Arabian  Sea,  the  Red 
Sea,  and  the  Suez  Canal  to  that  mysterious  land. 
To  the  right  and  to  the  left  of  the  entrance, 
divided*  only  by  a  couple  of  miles  of  salt  water, 
rise  naked,  fiercely  rifted  mountains,  from  one  to 
two  thousand  feet  in  height.  But  every  idea  of 
verdure,  seclusion,  brook,  and  watei'fall  we  are 
wont  to  associate  with  mountains  is  consumed  in 
fire.  Scorched,  blasted,  fairly  writhing  in  the  in- 
tolerable glare,  they  suggest  the  counterpart  in 
nature  of  Dives  in  hell  beseeching  the  poorest 
Lazarus  of  a  beggar  for  a  drop  of  water  to  cool  his 


A   SUN-SCORCHED  LAND  257 

burning  tongue.  The  very  sands  of  the  seashore, 
driven  by  the  winds  into  the  ravines,  choking  them 
up,  and  pursuing  them  aloft  into  their  remotest 
windiugs,  take  on  the  mocking  shape  of  descending 
glaciers,  only  glaciers  of  fiery  sand.  So  literal  is 
the  resemblance  that  it  is  hard  to  dislodge  the  idea 
that  the  cruel  deception  was  intended  by  malign 
Djins  as  a  last  refinement  of  torture. 

For  a  hundred  miles  from  Aden,  as  one  skirts 
the  western  coast  of  Arabia,  he  carries  with  him 
the  same  series  of  sun-scorched,  desiccated  moun- 
tain ranges,  and  he  knows  what  lies  behind  them. 
There  are  here  and  there  gorges  in  which  a  little 
moisture  is  collected,  and  a  struggle  for  life  main- 
tained by  a  few  stunted  shrubs.  There  are,  be- 
sides, in  part  of  the  vast  peninsula,  comparatively 
fertile  tracts,  from  which  was  derived  the  name 
Arabia  Felix.  But  it  takes  very  little  in  the  way 
of  verdure  to  make  some  people  happy,  particu- 
larly Arabians,  habituated  to  a  too  monotonous 
strain  of  sun,  sand,  and  calcareous  hardpan.  As 
is  sometimes  irreverentially  said  by  rival  religion- 
ists, "  Your  God  is  my  devil,"  just  in  the  same 
way  might  it  be  retorted  by  rival  nationalities, 
"  Your  oasis  is  my  desert." 

But,  after  all,  what  a  place  in  which  to 
breed  a  Semitic  prophet !  All  along  I  had 
felt  Mohammed  beginning  to  burn  himself  into 
my  brain,  as  I  imaged  him  hiding  himself  in  these 
blasted  mountains  to  have  out  the  terrible  wres- 
tle from  which  he  emerged  aflame  with  the  faith, 


258  EGYPT 

"  There  Is  one  God ;  and  I,  Mohammed,  am  his 
proijhet."  Day  by  day  had  he  had  the  awful  mon- 
otheistic sun  to  help  burn  in  the  thought  of  unity 
and  resistless  sovereignty.  That  Allah,  at  least, 
endured  no  rival  near  the  throne  !  A  eonsumino; 
fire,  none  could  hide  from  his  all-devouring  eye. 
Terrible  his  wrath,  as  every  withering  grass-blade, 
every  heat-riven  rock  attested.  Nothing  in  all 
nature  breathed  a  polytheistic  word  of  nymph  or 
triton.  Submit,  seek  shelter  under  the  shadow  of 
a  mighty  rock,  or  meet  annihilation  ! 

All  authorities  in  Oriental  studies  are  now 
agreed  that  Mohammed  derived  his  monotheistic 
idea  from  the  Jews.  But  this  was  little.  It  was 
the  consuming  passion  with  which  this  son  of  the 
desert  embraced  it,  —  the  irresistible  iconoclastic 
will  with  which  he  made  it  one  with  the  burning 
sands  and  flaming  hearts  of  Arabia,  in  which  lay 
the  secret  of  his  power.  To  what  among  such 
races  would  an  abstract  idea  of  unity  amount  ?  To 
no  more  than  an  inert  bullet  or  bombshell,  without 
a  magazine  of  explosives  behind  it  to  give  it  an- 
nihilating momentum.  Mohammed,  besides  being 
a  great  unitary  intellect,  as  demonstrated  in  his 
power  to  grasp  and  hold  unshaken  the  simplicity 
of  a  thought  as  sublime  and  all-pervading  in  the 
religious  world  as  gravitation  in  the  physical,  was, 
more  than  all,  a  man  of  volcanic  energy  of  pas- 
sion. 

Why  is  it,  somewhere  says  Emerson,  that  the 
reasoned  conclusions  of  a  mind  like  Plato's  can 
never  carry  with  them  the  same  sense  of  authority 


ARABIA  259 

that  pierces  in  the  shriek  of  an  Arab  prophet? 
As  well  ask  why  a  breeze  gently  wafting  over  the 
cornfields  of  Indiana  can  never  work  the  effect 
of  a  cyclone  whirling  the  disintegrated  atoms  of 
the  desert  into  gigantic  sand-spouts,  before  whose 
fury  all  goes  down  in  prostrate  suffocation  or  in 
literal  entombment  under  the  billows  of  a  sea  of 
desert  fire.  Every  little  circling  vortex  of  sand 
one  sees  waltzing  across  the  desert  is  more  than 
a  symbol,  is  a  literal  illustration  of  the  career  of 
Mohammedan  religious  conquest.  The  hot  sirocco 
breath  breathed  into  the  Bedouin  by  Mohammed, 
at  once  of  faith  in  Allah  and  his  moral  law,  and 
of  lust,  rapine,  and  annihilation  of  the  infidel,  finds 
its  perfect  physical  counterpart  before  the  eye. 

Mecca  and  Medina  one  does  not  see :  first,  be- 
cause he  cannot,  as  they  lie  far  inland ;  and,  second, 
because  the  ship  now  steers  so  far  from  shore  that 
they  would  not  be  visible  even  if  the  sacred  cities 
were  thoughtful  enough  of  tourists  to  stand  directly 
on  the  coast.  Still,  it  is  a  kind  of  historical  com- 
fort to  feel  them  in  the  neighborhood.  It  helps 
imagination. 

The  first  land  sighted  after  quitting  the  more 
southerly  coast  of  Arabia  is,  a  day  and  a  half  later, 
the  peninsula  of  Arabia  Petraea,  among  whose  sun- 
scorched  peaks  lies  Mt.  Sinai.  It  looks  just  as  fit 
a  place  to  bring  the  desert  to  bear  on  another  and 
vastly  earlier  Semitic  prophet,  with  his  chosen  peo- 
ple, as  that  already  spoken  of.  Let  it  be  clearly 
understood  that  the  desert  means  two  things, — 
here  arid,  desolate  mountain  ranges,  and  there  arid 


260  EGYPT 

and  desolate  levels  of  sand  and  liavdpan.  Their 
one  point  of  amity  is  that,  as  far  as  possible,  no- 
thing shall  grow  on  them.  By  this  time  the  Red 
Sea  is  rapidly  narrowing  into  the  Gulf  of  Suez, 
and  approximating  the  shores  of  Egypt  and  Ara- 
bia. To  the  east  now  stretch  vast  sand  levels,  while 
to  the  west  runs  the  range  of  low  mountains  behind 
which  lies  the  valley  of  the  Nile.  Then  Suez  is 
reached,  and  the  ship  enters  the  great  canal  shov- 
eled out  of  the  thirsty  sands  ever  ready  to  drift 
into  it  again  and  pack  it  solid,  as  the  snows  into  a 
cut  through  which  a  railway  runs.  Here  and  there 
a  few  lakes  offered  spells  of  relief  to  the  terrible 
digging. 

Before  I  had  kept  gazing  eastward  hour  by 
hour,  I  could  not  have  believed  that  mere 
stretches  of  sand  could  ever  impart  so  indescrib- 
able an  exhilaration  ;  yet  I  perfectly  shared  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  poor  old  countrywoman  who,  on 
first  being  taken  to  the  seashore,  cried  out  how 
glad  she  was  to  see  for  once  in  her  life  something 
there  was  enough  of.  The  smallest  oasis  would 
have  been  an  intrusion.  The  rim  of  the  horizon 
was  just  such  a  perfect  circle  as  embraces  the 
ocean.  All  was  straw-colored  sand-sea,  with  a  blue 
dome  a-top.  But  what  is  a  sea  without  ships?  Ah! 
the  desert  has  its  ships.  "  Ships  of  the  desert "  are 
the  camels  called;  and  soon  great  convoys  of  them, 
heavily  freighted  to  the  sand-line,  would  heave  into 
sight,  never  a  clipper  ship  or  fancy  yacht  built  on 
more  perfect  lines  for  its  especial  work. 


THE  DESERT  261 

Camels  In  the  desei't  are  no  intrusion.  They 
simply  enhance  the  sense  of  its  loneliness  and  deso- 
lation. Gaunt,  withered,  silent-footed,  a  root  out 
of  the  dry  ground,  with  no  form  nor  comeliness, 
they  look  as  natural  a  product  of  its  forces  as 
Mohammed  of  old  or  a  Mahdi  of  to-day.  Simply 
blown  together  in  a  loose-jointed  way  by  the  winds 
creatively  playing  with  the  whirling  sands,  do  they 
seem.  You  feel  absolutely  sure  that  they  eat  sand, 
drink  sand ;  that  currents  of  sand  circulate  through 
their  veins ;  that,  even  when  their  baby  camels 
suckle  them,  the  queer,  long-legged,  knock-kneed 
little  things  only  draw  in  a  flow  of  sand,  to  them  as 
nutritious  as  any  other  mother's  milk. 

Now  for  the  first  time  the  full  sense  of  the 
meaning  of  the  desert  masters  the  imagination. 
From  far  away  eastward  in  Arabia  to  the  thou- 
sands-of-miles-distant  Atlantic  coast  of  Africa  to 
the  west,  it  reigns,  almost  unbroken  but  by  the 
long  narrow  oasis  of  the  valley  of  the  Nile.  You 
feel  the  desert  —  I  repeat  it  —  like  a  vast  ele- 
mental Dives-thirst  in  hell  for  a  drop  of  water  to 
cool  its  burning  tongue.  Does  it  lie  in  the  physi- 
cal resources  of  the  earth  that  any  conceivable 
snow-crowned  mountain  ranges,  any  deluges  of 
tropical  rains,  should  suffice  to  feed  a  river  thirty- 
three  hundred  miles  long,  and  to  force  it,  a  vast, 
fructifying  tide,  through  a  thousand  miles  of  these 
gaping  sands  and  stones,  and  yet  so  brimming 
over,  three  months  in  the  year,  as  to  lay  under 
water  the  whole  long,  narrow  valley  and  the  ninety- 
mile-wide  expanse  of  the  delta?     This  is  the  stu- 


262  EGYPT 

pendous  feat  of  the  Nile,  which  every  day  at  "  High 
Nile "  pours  more  than  seven  hundred  thousand 
million  cvibic  metres  of  water  into  the  Mediterra- 
nean Sea,  besides  all  that  the  parching  soil  has 
drunk  to  slake  its  thirst.  To  take  all  this  in,  it 
is  infinitely  more  impressive  to  approach  Egyj)t  by 
the  way  of  Aden  in  Arabia  and  the  Red  Sea  than 
by  the  Mediterranean.  First  feel  the  desert,  and 
then  can  you  feel  the  Nile,  —  feel  it  physically,  and 
feel  it  historically  also.  For,  hot  as  is  the  thirst 
bred  in  its  sands  by  the  burning  sun,  hotter  yet 
the  passions  of  greed  and  envy  to  snatch  from  its 
lips  the  brimming  cup  that  were  bred  in  the  sons 
of  the  desert,  as  they  looked  down  from  the  bor- 
dering mountains  of  their  scorpion  fire-land  on  the 
luscious  green  of  the  wheat-fields  and  groves  of 
date-palms  of  that  miraculous  oasis. 

The  landing-place  for  passengers  from  India, 
via  the  Suez  Canal,  is  Ismailia,  about  sixty 
miles  northward  from  Suez  itself.  It  is  a  little 
town  that  grew  up  as  a  depot  during  the  cutting  of 
the  great  canal ;  and,  as  a  small  fresh-water  canal 
was  opened  to  the  distant  Nile  to  bring  down  a 
supply  for  the  workmen,  it  furnishes  to  the  novice 
an  interesting  exhibition,  on  a  miniature  scale,  of 
the  way  of  making  the  "  desert  blossom  as  the  rose." 
Every  tree  makes  one  think  of  cattle  driven  to  the 
river  to  drink,  only  that  the  trees  do  not  budge  and 
the  river  has  to  be  driven  to  them.  But  drink  they 
do,  like  trees  "  planted  by  the  rivers  of  water,  whose 
leaf  also  does  not  wither ; "  and  they  prosper  fairly 


ISMAILIA  263 

well.  But  a  man  does  not  journey  from  the  tropical 
luxuriance  of  Boston  Common  to  see  little  parks 
kept  from  dying  of  thirst  in  Ismailia.  The  grand 
attraction  is  the  people,  who  are,  perhaps,  half 
Arabs  and  half  Fellahin,  or  native  Egyptians,  with 
a  small  percentage  of  Turks. 

Among  the  Arabs,  one  sees  in  little  Ismailia 
more  magnificent-looking  men  in  a  day  than  he 
would  see  in  New  York  in  a  year,  if  ever.  The 
patriarch  Abraham  is  met  three  times  in  every 
hundred  yards,  perfectly  capable  of  entertaining 
the  angels  in  his  tent  and  then  bowing  them  a  gra- 
cious farewell  with  manners  as  celestial  in  dignity 
as  their  own.  Such  noble  heads  and  fine-cut, 
bearded  faces,  such  flowing  robes,  so  superb  a 
gait !  One  wants  to  follow  each  one  of  them  round 
all  day,  simply  to  keep  looking  at  him.  Infinite 
possibility  of  statesmen,  warriors,  or  prophets  does 
there  seem  in  them ;  and  in  comparison  they  make 
Europeans  look  cheap,  fussy,  and  contemptible. 
To  be  able  to  maintain  such  manners  on  ten  cents 
a  day  is  to  a  foreigner  a  standing  miracle. 

At  the  end  of  each  street,  however,  shine  the 
glowing  sands  of  the  desert ;  and  an  irresistible 
attraction  leads  one  out  to  gaze  over  it  again. 
There  are  foimd  the  wandering  Bedouins,  driving 
in  their  long  trains  of  camels,  forcing  them  to  kneel 
down,  and  unloading  them  of  their  heavy  burdens. 
How  vividly  are  Old  Testament  and,  later,  Moham- 
medan scenes  lighted  up  at  every  turn !  Rebecca  ! 
She  was  no  such  bedizened  princess  as  painters 
give  us.     She  was  just  such  a  pretty  camel-girl  as 


264  EGYPT 

you  see  before  you,  drawing  water  out  of  a  well. 
Ayesha,  Mohammed's  young  virgin  love,  after  Ka- 
dijah  grew  as  old  and  wrinkled  as  the  desert-aged 
women  you  see  about  you,  —  Ayesha,  —  why,  there 
she  stands  by  her  camel !  She  will  smile  on  you 
quite  bewitchingly  out  of  her  lustrous  eyes,  as  you 
communicate  wdth  her  by  signs  and  gestures,  — 
the  only  dialect  of  Arabic  at  your  command, — yes, 
and  alas !  will  beg  you  for  bakshish^  whether  an  in- 
novation introduced  into  her  circle  of  ideas  since 
Mohammed  wooed  her  my  erudition  is  too  scant  to 
say.  The  thousand,  the  three  thousand  years  of 
interval  vanish ;  and  you  are  standing  in  the  midst 
of  identically  similar  scenery  and  personalities.  Be 
sure,  however,  to  keep  a  civil  tongue  in  your  head. 
Never  lift  a  finger  in  menace  against  an  Arab.  He 
may  be  clad  in  rags,  but  a  Chevalier  Bayard  is  la- 
tent under  them,  who  flashes  fire  like  a  flint  struck 
by  steel. 

How  different  with  the  Fellahin,  —  the  pea- 
sant-class descendants,  however  mixed  in 
blood,  of  the  old  Egyptians  I  Significantly  enough 
has  Egypt  been  called  the  "  Land  of  the  Rod." 
"  Spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child  "  nowhere  else 
has  received  so  stupendous  an  illustration.  The 
rod,  with  backs  to  apply  it  to,  built  the  Pyramids, 
dug  the  canals,  collected  the  taxes,  and  to  this  day, 
though  the  English  government  is  striving  to  abol- 
ish it,  is  taken  as  the  natural  and  immutable  order 
of  things.  To  see  a  crowd  of  perhaps  fifty  natives 
surging  down  on  a  dozen  or  more  tourists,  each  of 


THE  LAND   OF  THE  ROD  265 

the  fifty  yelling  the  merits  of  his  donkey,  and  wild 
to  have  it  taken,  and  then  to  watch  the  sight  as 
two  or  three  men  leap  from  the  boat  and  begin  to 
belabor  the  poor  devils  with  sticks,  is  certainly  a 
novel  and,  to  a  free-born  American,  a  painful 
sight.  Right  and  left  fall  the  resounding  blows 
on  heads  and  noses,  and  shoulders  and  loins,  till 
your  own  skull  and  shoulders  ache  sympathetically. 
But  not  a  particle  of  resistance  is  offered  or  the 
slightest  sense  of  outrage  manifested.  A  practical 
demonstration  on  such  a  scale  of  the  results  of  the 
doctrine  of  non-resistance  would  excite  every  bel- 
ligerent propensity  in  the  most  placid  Quaker  to 
the  bull-dog  pitch.  Holding  a  hand  to  his  half- 
cracked  crown  or  battered  jaw,  each,  as  he  falls 
back,  keeps  on  yelling  the  praises  of  his  beast : 
"  Him  bully  donkey  !  Him  General  Grant  don- 
key !  Him  Mark  Twain  donkey ! "  and,  to  empha- 
size the  truth,  a  dozen  of  them  are  shoved  pell-mell 
at  you.  To  try  to  stretch  your  legs  over  one  is  to 
find  two  or  three  others  thrust  imder  you  in  a 
breath.  Then  another  charge  of  the  whackers,  and 
a  clearing  is  made  sufficient  to  enable  you  to  be- 
stride not  more  than  a  couple  of  donkeys  at  once ; 
and  gradually  you  contrive  so  to  contract  your  leg- 
compasses  as  to  embrace  but  one. 

Yes,  you  understand  now  how  the  Pyramids 
were  built ;  and  the  whole  atmosphere  of  Egypt  in 
the  past  echoes  with  the  reverberation  of  thwack  ! 
whack !  on  the  muscles  and  bones  of  the  poor 
wretches,  whose  works  you,  as  an  idle  tourist,  are 
going  to  see.     It  would  be  very  interesting  to  read 


266  EGYPT 

a  statistical  table,  at  the  hands  of  some  such  com- 
petent Egyptologist  as  Mariette  Pasha  or  Maspero, 
of  how  many  thousands  of  cords  of  rods  were  used 
up  on  the  bodies  of  the  one  hundred  thousand 
workmen  whom  it  took  twenty  years  to  build  the 
one  pyramid  of  Cheops.  At  the  same  time  fresh 
light  is  thrown  by  the  scene  on  the  asperities  of 
brick-making  among  the  Bedouin  Hebrews,  who  at 
last  revolted  and  went  out  under  Moses.  Savory 
as  were  the  leeks  and  onions  of  Egypt,  one  begins 
to  understand  how  even  the  desert  might  present 
counterbalancing  attractions.  Broken  heads  and 
bones  are  bad,  but  a  broken  and  abject  manhood  is 
worse.  It  was  high  time,  if  the  world  were  to  get 
any  future  Isaiahs  out  of  the  tribe,  that  the  tonic 
of  the  desert  should  be  brought  to  bear  on  it, 
where,  disciplined  by  a  predatory  life  of  semi-star- 
vation, it  should  be  got  in  train  to  fall  like  fam- 
ished wolves  on  the  lands  of  the  Canaanites. 

Well,  here  is  a  long  way  round  to  get  to  Egypt; 
but  often  the  longest  way  round  is  the  shortest 
way  home.  I  am  but  writing  personal  impressions ; 
and  this  is  the  manner  in  which  the  actual  experi- 
ence impressed  me.  Just  as  one  must  be  hot  and 
thirsty  before  he  can  appreciate  a  delicious  drink 
from  a  spring,  so  must  he  be  hot  and  thirsty  of  the 
desert  before  he  is  sensitively  ready  for  the  brim- 
ming cup  of  Egypt.  The  desert  and  the  Nile  have 
been  perpetually  co-working  factors  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  civilization,  religion,  art,  conquest,  and  com- 
merce. 


II. 

From  Ismailia  by  rail  it  is  a  four  hours' 
ride  to  Cairo.  The  only  peril  besetting  the 
first  part  of  the  way  grows  out  of  a  possible  stam- 
pede of  camels  across  the  track  in  the  van  along 
its  line.  To  this  we  personally  were  treated.  Of 
course,  to  encounter  the  like  phenomenon  with 
cows,  one  does  not  need  to  leave  America.  But 
cows  are  commonplace,  while  derailment  by  a 
camel  stirs  the  romantic  element  within  the  breast. 
Certainly,  for  stretch  of  legs  and  speed,  when  once 
headed  straight  down  track,  the  performance  of  a 
herd  of  camels  makes  that  of  a  herd  of  cows  seem 
tame.  In  appeal  to  imagination,  there  can  be  no 
comjiarison.  Such  close  approximation  of  the  cam- 
els of  Abraham  and  the  locomotive  of  Stephenson 
is  significant ;  indeed,  in  its  lively  way,  a  symbolic 
parable  on  legs  of  the  stampede  of  the  Orient  be- 
fore the  Occident. 

A  couple  of  hours  and  one  is  out  of  desert  and 
semi-desert,  plunged  right  into  the  heart  of  the 
land  of  Goshen.  Oh,  how  green  it  looks  !  Such 
leeks,  such  onions,  such  a  growth  of  alfalfa  clover, 
such  beauty  of  the  graceful  date-palms,  such  pic- 
turesque-looking clusters  of  square  flat-roofed  mud 
huts,  overhung  with  palms,  —  buildings  so  fascinat- 
ing to  the  artist,  so  Oriental  to  the  tourist,  and  so 


268  EGYPT 

fetid  to  live  in  !  As  the  train  would  stop  for  a 
while  before  one  of  these  villages,  a  curious  specta- 
cle was  always  at  hand  which  might  be  of  historic 
imjjort.  Indeed,  what  is  the  use  of  traveling  if 
everything  one  sees  does  not  take  on  historic  di- 
mensions ?  Well,  the  Egyptians  have  been  called 
the  most  patient  of  peoples  in  the  world.  This  pa- 
tience, does  it  root  in  their  impassive  nervous  fibre, 
or  is  it  the  result  of  self-control?  Certain  it  is 
that  one  sees  no  end  of  babies  of  six  months,  their 
faces  thick  with  swarming  flies,  and  each  eye  itself 
constantly  run  over  by  the  legs  of  at  least  a  dozen, 
who  never  so  much  as  wink,  much  less  lift  a  tiny 
hand  to  brush  the  pests  away.  Many  the  minister 
at  home,  a  man  of  ascetic  moral  training  and  high 
spirituality,  who  is  yet  more  carnally  exercised, 
even  in  the  full  fervor  of  his  discourse,  by  a  sin- 
gle fly  persistently  disporting  around  the  sensitive 
flanges  of  his  nostrils,  than  are  these  little  inno- 
cents by  swarms  of  them.  Under  like  aggravation, 
an  American  baby  would  make  the  welkin  ring. 
The  historic  question,  therefore,  inevitably  precipi- 
tated by  such  a  nervous  phenomenon  is  whether 
American  babies,  already  so  high-strung  and  rebel- 
lious at  the  age  of  six  months,  coidd  ever  develop 
into  a  race  capable  of  building  the  Pyramids  ? 

No,  all  this  infantile  example  means  something 
of  the  gravest  impoi't.  Here  is  a  race  in  which 
in  certain  directions  the  ordinary  reflex  action  of 
the  nervous  system  has  shrunk  to  practical  atro- 
phy. This  child,  in  whom  the  legs  of  a  fly  cours- 
ing round  his  nostrils  do  not  call  out  a  reacting 


NILE  HINTS  269 

muscular  twitch,  is  father  of  the  man  in  whom 
a  blow  does  not  call  out  an  answering  blow,  who 
will,  without  a  finger  lifted  in  resistance,  suffer 
himself  to  be  knocked  down,  kicked,  and  jumped 
on.  Nothing  perfectly  analogous  in  the  animal 
world  is  witnessed  but  in  the  conduct  of  the  span- 
iel. Does  this  mean  that  if  the  odds  are  contin- 
uously and  overwhelmingly  against  man  or  dog, 
the  spirit  at  last  succumbs,  and  even  the  physical 
instinct  of  nervous  reaction  dies  of  inanition  ? 
Rod  enough  and  flies  enough,  will  the  very  nerves 
at  last  throw  up  the  sponge  ?  Ah !  here  lies  the 
pathetic  heartbreak  of  so  much  one  sees  in  Egypt. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  anything  about  Cairo 
now,  but  first  to  go  up  the  Nile,  and  pre- 
liminarily to  throw  out  a  hint  or  two  that  may 
prove  of  use. 

Until  the  accession  of  Thomas  Cook  &  Son  to 
the  vacant  throne  of  the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt  the 
old  way  of  ascending  the  Nile  was  by  small  sail- 
vessels  called  "dahabiyehs."  For  fear  of  unguard- 
edly misspelling  them,  I  shall  henceforth  call  them 
simply  boats ;  but  in  this  individual  instance  the 
spelling  can  be  relied  on  as  abreast  with  the  latest 
scholarship  in  Arabic  English.  These  boats  re- 
quired a  party  of  eight  or  ten  to  share  expenses, 
and,  moreover,  a  whole  winter  at  one's  disposal  to 
meet  delays.  It  was  undoubtedly  the  ideal  way  of 
seeing  the  Nile.  Finally,  however,  Pharaoh  Cook 
built  a  fleet  of  steamers  ;  and  by  these  almost  all 
people   travel   to-day.     The   passengers   on  board 


270  EGYPT 

form  what  is  called  a  "personally  conducted  party." 
Tliey  have  their  own  dragoman,  who  provides  don- 
keys, routs  donkey  boys,  and  gives  imperfect  expla- 
nations of  hieroglyphical  and  mythological  myste- 
ries that  might  baffle  the  untutored  mind. 

The  day  was  when  the  thought  of  ever  becom- 
ing a  member  of  a  "personally  conducted  party" 
would  have  made  me  shudder  from  sea  to  sea. 
Had  I  not  too  often  been  startled  in  the  Vatican  by 
the  sudden,  noisy  irruption  of  the  Cook  barbarians, 
heard  the  regulation  hand-clap  from  the  leader 
for  silence,  and  then  listened  to  his  inane  routine 
remarks  as  he  personally  conducted  his  victims 
round  from  statue  to  statue  ?  Had  I  not  equally 
reveled  in  the  blessed  stillness  that  followed  when, 
the  short-lived  tumult  over,  I  was  left  alone  once 
more  to  the  serene  Olympian  companionsliip  of 
Juno,  Minerva,  Apollo,  and  Zeus  ?  And  now 
should  I  actually  live  to  become  a  Cookite  myself, 
and  that,  too,  in  Egypt  ?  No !  by  Isis  and  Osiris  ! 
by  jackal-headed  Anubis  and  ram-skulled  Kneph ! 
No  !  by  sun-crowned  Ra ! 

Well,  I  want  to  take  a  great  deal  of  this  frankly 
back,  —  at  least  in  so  far  as  Egypt  is  concerned. 
There  are  uninteresting  reaches  in  the  river  which 
the  steamer  carries  one  quickly  by.  Meanwhile 
on  board  there  are  the  satisfactions  of  excellent 
fare,  clean  beds,  attentive  service,  and  perfect  hon- 
esty of  treatment,  while  among  so  many  passen- 
gers one  makes  sure  of  agreeable  companionship. 
Of  course  one  sighs  that  he  cannot  have  Egypt 
more  to  himself.     Still,  driven  to  sufficient  desper- 


NILE  HINTS  271 

ation,  man  is  rich  in  individual  resources  toward 
securing  peace  and  quietness.  On  long  excursions 
one  may  urge  his  donkey  far  ahead  of  the  madding 
crowd,  or  imaginatively  afflict  him  with  such  spavin 
as  to  serve  as  a  pretext  for  mercifully  keej^ing  him 
in  the  rear.  One  may  learn  to  spot  and  shun  the 
various  types  of  bores,  as,  in  especial,  the  man 
whose  sole  interest  in  visiting  Egyptian  temples  is 
to  distinguish  the  cartouches,  or  seals,  of  the  dif- 
ferent kings,  and  who,  for  all  the  glorious  architec- 
ture, would  be  quite  as  well  off  at  home  with  a  stick 
of  sealing-wax,  a  candle,  and  a  collection  of  authen- 
ticated scarabsei  dies  to  stamp  with. 

Still,  for  the  quietly  ruminating  man  who  yearns 
to  have  his  temple  to  himself,  the  device  of  devices 
to  study  is  how  to  keep  out  of  sight  and  sound 
of  the  dragoman  and  his  rabble  Comus  rout  who 
want  to  have  their  minds  improved.  Providen- 
tially, the  enormous  size  of  the  temples  renders  this 
quite  feasible.  The  dragoman,  as  a  general  rule, 
is  an  Egyptian  of  very  imperfect  French  or  Eng- 
lish articulation.  He  has  scraped  a  purely  busi- 
ness acquaintance  with  Isis,  Anubis  &  Co.,  and 
thinks  he  knows  them  by  their  trade-marks.  Old 
Egyptian  mythology,  however,  is  di'eadfuUy  con- 
fused. The  numberless  gods,  goddesses,  cults, 
and  symbolic  signs  crossed,  invaded,  and  annexed 
one  another  in  a  way  that,  in  comparison,  would 
make  the  genealogical  tables  of  the  Hohenstauffen 
and  Hapsburg  emperors  easy  reading.  Indeed, 
often  would  it  seem,  on  visiting  a  fresh  temple, 
as  though  Amen-Ra,  Horus,  Kneph,  Nit,  Thoth, 


272  EGYPT 

and  tlie  rest  had  been  startled  out  of  a  deep  sleep 
by  the  footsteps  of  the  party,  and,  suddenly  seizing 
and  putting  on,  higgledy-piggledy,  one  another's 
crocodile's,  cat's,  ram's,  or  hawk's  heads,  had  jumped 
up  and  plastered  themselves  against  the  walls,  so 
as  all  to  get  into  jDlausible  shape  to  confound  our 
erudition.  In  the  long,  narrow  passages,  however, 
of  the  underground  tombs,  these  resources  fail. 
There  is,  then,  nothing  for  it  but  to  be  as  patient 
under  suffering  as  an  Egyptian  baby  beset  by  a 
swarm  of  buzzing  flies.  Calmer  hours  of  reflection 
will  come  later,  in  which  memories  of  all  you  have 
seen  there  will  emerge  beautiful  as  reborn  dragon- 
flies  that  have  sloughed  off  and  left  behind  their 
rent  and  desiccated  Cook  strait-jackets. 

The  departure  from  Cairo  for  one's  voyage 
up  the  Nile  presents  for  the  first  two  or  three 
hours  a  succession  of  fascinating  pictures.  The 
city  itself,  crowned  by  the  great  citadel  of  Sala- 
din,  and  at  its  summit  by  the  five-domed  mosque 
of  Mohammed-Ali,  with  its  two  slender,  sky-pier- 
cing minarets,  smiles  a  gracious  good-by  and  God 
speed  for  a  voyage  of  wonders.  Into  the  very  city 
thrusts  itself  a  great  arm  of  the  desert ;  and  out 
from  stretches  of  straw-colored  sand  rise,  like  ex- 
halations, the  ruins  of  the  beautiful  tombs  of  the 
Khalifs,  to  me  the  most  charming  of  all  the  archi- 
tectural glories  of  Cairo.  In  color  the  stone  of 
which  their  walls  and  domes  are  built  differs  little 
from  the  unbroken  sands  around  them,  imparting, 
as  one  sees  them  in  the  quivering  glow  of  the  sun- 


THE  GIZEH  PYRAMIDS  273 

shine,  the  sense,  not  to  be  reasoned  with,  that  the 
desert  genii  have  built  them  out  of  sand  and  gra- 
ciously shaping  winds,  as  with  us  the  like  sem- 
blance of  temples  is  created  of  snowdrifts  and  win- 
ter storms.  Further,  from  all  quarters  of  the  city 
rise  at  a  hundred  points  the  fanciful  minarets  of 
the  Mohannnedan  mosques. 

Past  the  palaces  of  the  Khedive  and  past  the 
long,  narrow  island  of  Roda,  with  its  Nilometer  and 
the  traditional  spot  where  Moses  was  found  in  the 
bulrushes,  one  follows  the  great  curves  of  the  river 
till  the  enormous  pyramids  of  Gizeh  rise  up  in 
naked  distinctness  from  the  desert. 

Already  had  my  friend  and  I  visited  these  from 
Cairo  and  climbed  Cheops.  It  is  an  instructive 
thing  to  do  once  ;  but  I  defy  any  one,  even  with 
the  steadiest  head  against  dizziness,  to  get  any 
emotional  pleasure,  any  sense  of  the  lapse  of  the 
ages,  anything  but  execration  of  the  present,  out 
of  it.  Each  climber  is  obliged  by  law  to  take  with 
him  three  Bedouins,  —  two  to  pull,  and  one  to 
push.  From  start  to  finish  it  is  one  unintermitting 
yell  for  bakshish.  With  this  they  keep  on  tearing 
the  ears  of  their  victims.  Personally,  I  had  but 
two  emotions,  —  the  one  that  the  old  Egyptians 
were  the  most  intolerable  stair -builders  in  the 
world,  the  other  that,  were  I  on  the  jury,  I  would 
vote  to  acquit  on  the  spot  any  tourist  who  had 
killed  his  Bedouins.  Mine,  strict  justice  forces  me 
to  admit,  had  one,  perhaps  exceptional,  linguistic 
accomplishment.  They  had  been  taught  by  some 
misguided  American  (Allah  reward  him  according 


274  EGYPT 

to  his  works!)  to  sing  the  tune  and  words  of  "Yan- 
kee Doodle ; "  and,  perforce,  must  I,  two  thirds  up 
the  pyramid  of  Cheops,  join  hands  with  these  yell- 
ing Ishmaelites,  and  dance  and  sing  this  most  triv- 
ial of  all  national  anthems.  Anything  for  peace ! 
And  so  I  did  it,  with  a  lingering  sense  of  shame 
that  "  forty  centuries  were  looking  down  "  upon 
my  caperings.  Indeed,  time  which  heals  so  many 
wounds,  has  never  had  the  least  effect  in  mitigat- 
ing the  exasperation  of  that  climb  of  Cheops.  It 
would  have  been  such  bliss  to  lie  off  half  the  day 
and  muse.  The  blind,  fierce  pertinacity  of  flies 
settling  on  a  festering  sore  was  the  only  fit  symbol 
of  these  human  flies  so  fiercely  preying  on  a  fester- 
ing spirit.  If  only  I  could  come  to  look  back  hu- 
morously on  the  scene !  But  I  cannot.  Never 
does  it  revive  in  memory  but  I  feel  murder  in  my 
heart. 

And  yet,  I  repeat  it,  it  is  a  good  thing  once  and 
forever  to  have  gone  through  this  purgatory,  —  to 
use  the  milder  word.  A  cairn  of  gigantic  blocks 
of  stone,  covering  at  the  base  over  thirteen  acres, 
and  rising  to  a  height  of  nearly  five  hundred  feet, 
built  solid  moreover,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
narrow  passages,  from  skin  to  core,  is  certainly  the 
most  stupendous  feat  of  the  wrestle  of  mind  with 
brute  matter  the  round  world  can  show.  Further- 
more, as  psychologists  assure  us,  the  role  played  by 
the  muscular  sense  in  all  adequate  appreciation  of 
phenomena  of  weight  is  indispensable  as  a  mental 
standard.  Therefore,  given  a  solid  stone  staircase, 
with  risers  averaging  four  to  five  feet,  and  a  twenty- 


THE  GIZEH  PYRAMIDS  275 

eight-incli  stretcli  of  legs  to  surmount  them  with, 
and,  before  one  is  up  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet, 
he  has  developed  into  a  self-conscious  derrick  and 
apparatus  of  blocks  and  hawsers  that  will  thence- 
forth enable  him  to  weigh  to  a  hair  every  colossal 
column  or  architrave  he  later  on  encounters  in 
Egypt.  The  moment  his  eye  lights  on  one,  the 
consciousness  will  revive  of  just  how  many  tons 
of  matter  and  emotion  it  physically  and  mentally 
stands  for,  and  the  sense  of  awe  will  expand  pro- 
portionally. 

Seen,  however,  from  the  river,  as  one  now  sees 
the  Gizeh  pyramids  in  his  voyage  up  the  Nile,  all 
one's  old  associations  of  reverence  and  mysteiy 
come  back  again.  One  is  at  rest  and  in  peace. 
No  Bedouin  yell  lacerates  his  ears,  and  the  Hotspur 
in  his  blood  is  no  longer  "  stung  with  pismires." 
Around  these  mighty  cairns  and  behind  them  is  the 
awful  desert,  and  at  their  feet  the  Sphinx,  time- 
worn  and  broken  with  her  century-long  brooding 
over  the  mystery  of  existence.  Anywhere  else  but 
thus  set  in  the  naked  simplicity  of  the  desert  they 
would  lose  their  great  effect.  For  they  are  not 
beautiful  or  sublime  in  the  sense  that  a  Greek  or 
an  Egyptian  temple  is  beautiful  or  sublime.  There 
is  not  range  and  variety  enough  of  thought  in  their 
creation ;  no  thought,  indeed,  unless  of  enduring- 
construction  that  shall  defy  war  and  earthquake 
and  outdate  time. 

One  does  not,  therefore,  in  the  least  wonder 
that  so  many  scientific  niinds  of  a  speculative  cast 
have  written  elaborate  books,  such  as  "  Our  Inheri- 


276  EGYPT 

taiice  In  the  Great  P^'ramid,"  to  prove  that  these 
vast  structures  were  built  for  purely  geometrical 
and  astronomical  purposes,  and  stood  for  the  inde- 
structible standards  of  the  old  Egyptian  metric 
system  instead  of  being  built  as  the  Gibraltars  of 
a  single  royal  mummy.  There  to  all  ages  they 
stand  foursquare,  a  terrestrial  apotheosis  of  the 
immutable  axioms  of  geometry,  colossal  memorial 
tributes  reared  as  to  the  mind  of  Euclid.  Rever- 
entially, and  not  lightly,  does  it  seem  as  though 
the  hieroglyphic  inscription  on  them  ought  to  rec- 
ord that  superb  demonstration,  "  The  square  of 
the  hypothenuse  is  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  squares 
of  the  other  two  sides."  So  enduring  a  feat  of 
reason,  was  it  not  far  worthier  of  embodiment  in 
an  everlasting  pyramid  than  the  memory  of  any 
battle  ? 

In  the  mind  of  the  non-mathematical  tourist, 
however,  such  nineteenth -century  heresy  as  this 
does  not  linger  long.  Rather,  he  broods  over  the 
long,  deej)  sleep  of  King  Khufu  in  his  silent  in- 
most chamber ;  over  the  drone  of  the  priestly 
masses  that  for  more  than  two  thousand  years  were 
still  kept  up  for  the  repose  of  his  soul ;  over  the 
impressive  material-spiritual  faith  that  incarnated 
itself  in  such  enormous  structures  :  over  the  hun- 
dred thousand  slaves  who  for  twenty  years  were 
under  the  lash,  quarrying  and  upheaving  these  gi- 
gantic blocks  to  make  sure  that  after  life's  fitful 
fever  one  fellow-mortal  should  sleep  well  ;  over 
the  successive  dynasties  —  Egyptian,  Hyksos,  As- 
syrian, Persian,  Greek,  Roman,  Saracen,  Turkish, 


MEMPHIS  111 

*French,  English  —  that  have  risen  and  perished 
like  successive  waves  beneath  a  sea  cliff  at  the 
base  of  these  indestructible  monuments.  Yes,  as 
one  bi'oods  and  broods,  he  gets  back  again  the  Pyr- 
amids of  his  early  awe,  —  immutable  standards,  in- 
deed, of  measurement,  —  not,  however,  of  the  boun- 
daries of  farm  lands  nor  of  the  bulk  of  granary 
stores  of  wheat,  but  of  the  epochs  of  human  his- 
tory. Up  to  their  summits  he  gazes  through  the 
eyes  of  Khufu  and  Abraham,  and  Rameses,  and 
Moses,  and  Cambyses,  and  Herodotus,  and  Alex- 
ander tlie  Great,  and  Plato,  and  wanton  Cleopatra, 
and  Saladin,  and  Napoleon.  The  last  trace  of  the 
discord  of  the  yelling  Bedouins  lapses  silently  out 
of  his  mind ;  and  he  thanks  God  that  in  its  place 
has  succeeded  the  solemnizing  pendulum-beat  "For- 
ever, Never  !  "  of  what  seems  the  sidereal  clock  of 
the  universe. 

An  hour  or  two  past  the  Gizeh  Pyramids, 
and  the  boat  stops  at  Sakkarah.  "  Now 
comes  my  fit  again  !  "  Of  course,  the  bank  is 
black  as  a  crow-roost  with  braying  donkeys  and 
screaming  donkey  boys.  Sic  itui'  ad  astra  in 
Egypt,  and  as  well  might  a  dying  dog  hope  to 
expostulate  with  the  awaiting  buzzards.  So  let 
this  once  for  all  suffice.  You  fight  your  way 
through  the  surging  mob  of  arms,  shoulders,  hoofs, 
and  tails,  and,  somehow  or  other,  find  yourself 
astride  a  beast.  In  the  interim  of  waiting  one 
frantic  Egyptian  is  thrusting  a  scarabaeus  under 
your  nose,  another  a  mummy's  foot,  and  so  on  and 


278  EGYPT 

on  till  you  are  appealed  to  with  the  individual  at- 
tractions of  freshly  manufactured  antiques  enough 
to  set  up  a  pseudo-Bulak  museum. 

At  last  you  get  away ;  and,  as  on  this  special 
occasion  there  were  about  eighteen  miles  to  ride, 
with  stoj)S  for  refreshment  only  at  tombs,  the  pace 
adoj)ted  was  severe.  Still,  it  proved  exciting  till 
gradually  it  was  brought  home,  by  seeing  friend 
after  friend  take  a  header,  how  little  the  Egyptian 
donkey  has  made  of  his  "  Inheritance  in  the  Great 
Pyramid "  in  the  way  of  standing  foursquare  on 
his  base.  Mine  own  especial  donkey,  Rameses  II., 
while  on  the  full  tear,  came  down  in  a  pile,  with 
an  abruptness  that  shot  me  over  his  head  in  a 
splendid  parabolic  curve  that  might  have  brained 
me  but  for  the  buffer  of  my  inch-thick  cork  hel- 
met. 

As  soon  as  possible,  however,  after  getting  away 
one  must  do  his  best  —  it  is  the  only  hope  in  Egypt 
—  to  retire  into  the  depths  of  his  inner  conscious- 
ness, and  there  wall  himself  in  as  tight  as  old 
King  Khufu  in  his  Gizeh  Pyramid.  Much  in  the 
way  of  saving  wear  and  tear  of  spirit  can  thus  be 
achieved.  Even  as  in  a  siege  the  mother  with  her 
babe  can  learn  to  sleep  sound  under  a  cannonade, 
and  awaken  only  when  the  little  one  begins  to  fret 
for  milk,  so  in  Egypt  itself  can  a  well-disciplined 
mind  learn  to  abandon  itself  to  day-dreams  under 
a  fusillade  of  bakshish,  and  yet  be  all  on  the  spot 
the  moment  an  appeal  is  made  to  its  tenderer  his- 
torical or  architectural  emotions. 

At  first  the  way  led  along  canal  embankments 


MEMPHIS  279 

and  through  fields  of  the  richest  garden  culture, 
while  beyond  lay  the  shining  calcareous  cliffs  and 
hot  shifting  sands  of  the  desert,  —  the  contrast  of 
never-failing  interest  to  the  traveler  in  Egypt. 

An  hour  or  more  and  we  were  now  on  the  site 
of  Memphis,  on  the  site  and  on  nothing  else. 
Not  a  trace  remains  of  this  once  splendid  metrop- 
olis, founded,  so  runs  tradition,  by  Menes,  the 
first  recorded  Egyptian  king,  and,  even  so  late  as 
the  day  when  Herodotus  visited  it,  still  the  most 
magnificent  city  in  the  kingdom.  Sovereign  after 
sovereign  enlarged  and  beautified  it  with  temples, 
groves,  lakes,  colossal  statues,  and  tombs ;  while 
within  its  vast  necropolis,  stretching  over  a  region 
of  forty-five  miles,  lay  all  the  seventy  pyramids  of 
Egypt,  from  Abu  Roash  on  the  north  to  Medum  on 
the  south.  But  to-day,  over  the  ground  on  which 
stood  this  luxurious  capital,  one  rides  through  un- 
broken fields  of  wheat  and  barley  and  maize  and 
onions  to  the  edge  of  the  desert,  and  finds  as  me- 
morials of  all  this  glory  of  the  past  but  two  muti- 
lated colossal  statues  of  Rameses  II.,  now  prone  on 
their  backs,  but  nearly  fifty  feet  in  height  when 
they  stood  erect. 

We  had  come,  however,  not  to  look  at  cornfields 
growing  where  once  stood  a  mighty  city,  but  to 
ride  on  into  the  desert  to  visit  the  scene  of  desola- 
tion presented  by  the  ruins  of  the  eleven  pyramids 
of  the  Saldiarah  plateau,  among  them  the  Step 
Pyramid,  built  not  in  triangular  shape,  but  in  three 
great  stages.  It  is  the  oldest  of  all  the  pyramids, 
its  present  height  from  the  base  about  one  liun- 


280  EGYPT 

dred  and  ninety-seven  feet.  What  a  wilderness  of 
ruins  !  "  The  abomination  of  desolation,"  —  here, 
of  a  truth,  it  is  revealed !  In  many  a  land  the  fall 
to  destruction  of  a  great  monument  is  but  a  signal 
to  loving  and  bountiful  nature  for  beautiful  trees 
to  root  in  its  ruins  and  for  birds  to  sing  among 
their  branches,  for  mosses  and  ferns  to  drape  its 
flanks,  for  bluebells  and  columbines  to  nod  their 
o-raceful  flowers  from  its  cornices.  But  in  the  des- 
ert  to  fall  in  ruins  is  the  fate  of  the  caravan  dying 
of  thirst  in  the  burning  sands.  Bare,  bleached 
bones  are  the  only  record.  Around  or  on  top  of 
these  gigantic  ruins  not  a  grass-blade  grows,  not  a 
di-y  root  out  of  the  ground  lifts  a  withered  head ; 
and  the  solemn  burial  service  to  read  over  all  is, 
not  "  dust  to  dust,  ashes  to  ashes,"  but  "  desert  to 
desert,  sand  to  sand." 

It  was  the  custom  of  the  EgjqDtians  to  found  the 
necropolis  always  in  the  desert  behind  the  city,  and 
never  upon  the  fertile  plain,  as  with  our  own  beau- 
tiful cemeteries.  Two  main  reasons  determined 
this,  —  to  get  above  the  reach  of  the  inundations 
of  the  Nile,  and  to  secure  in  the  cliffs  the  hard 
rock  strata  into  which  to  cut  chambers  and  gal- 
leries. Still  another  reason  was  security  against 
body-snatchers,  a  form  of  robbery  infinitely  more 
tempting  in  a  land  where  untold  wealth  of  gold 
and  jewels  was  often  buried  with  the  dead  than  in 
a  land  where  no  other  use  could  be  made  of  the 
mortal  booty  than  to  sell  it  to  the  doctors.  Over 
thousands,  however,  of  these  rock-cut  tombs  have 
the  winds  of  a  hundred  centuries  swept  the  sands, 


KNIGHT-ERRANTS   OF  THE  SHOVEL     281 

till  every  trace  of  their  site  is  lost.  Thus  what 
has  been  unveiled  in  Egypt  is  as  nothing  to  what 
still  lies  buried.  Beneath  the  sands  over  which 
one  rides  are  endless  cities  of  tombs  forever  hid- 
den, —  cities  that,  while  Memphis  itself  hardly  bal- 
anced deaths  by  births,  doubled  generation  by  gen- 
eration their  own  ghostly  population,  still  dreamily 
living  on  in  mansions  more  spacious  and  costly 
than  ever  tenanted  by  those  in  the  sunshine  above. 
One  sighs  for  the  boon  Harriet  jSIartineau  craved 
of  some  mighty  god,  to  be  made  Boreas,  with  cy- 
clones at  command,  to  sweep  away  these  sands. 
The  boon  was  never  granted.  "What  was  accorded 
was  bestowed  on  a  humbler,  but  more  heroic,  class 
of  patient  toilers. 

To  the  patient  digging  of  brave  archaeolo- 
gists do  we  owe  almost  all  our  knowledge 
of  the  ancient  glories  of  Egypt.  They  alone  lifted 
the  veil  from  the  face  of  this  mysterious  Isis. 
Truly,  of  all  the  forms  of  modern  heroism  few  are 
more  worthy  of  applause  than  the  patience,  the 
courage  in  facing  greedy  ferocity  and  peril  of  life, 
the  stern  endurance  of  loneliness,  privation,  and 
the  furnace  of  fiery  heat  displayed  —  no  I  hidden 
—  summer  and  winter,  year  in,  year  out,  by  num- 
bers of  these  devoted  men.  Foremost  of  all  was 
the  Frenchman,  Mariette.  Never  knight  of  old 
more  chivalrous  and  indomitable  in  rescuing  from 
enchanted  castle  the  imprisoned  maiden  there  than 
he  in  delivering  from  the  dungeon  of  the  eng'ulfino^ 
sands  the  pride  and  glory  of  the  Egypt  of  old  that 


282  EGYPT 

had  been  the  torch-bearer  of  civilization  to  the  be- 
niohted  nations  of  the  workl. 

In  the  course  of  the  ride  over  the  toilsome  sands 
one  comes  to  the  lonely  house  where  for  so  many- 
years  this  knight-errant  of  the  desert  had  lived. 
Close  by  it  are  his  two  great  discoveries  in  this 
region,  —  the  Serapeum,  or  Apis  Mausoleum,  and 
the  Tomb  of  Thi.  How  he  divined  them  hidden 
beneath  the  sand  is  a  story  it  would  be  pleasant  to 
tell  did  space  permit.  But  divine  where  they  were 
he  did,  and  then,  with  his  army  of  laborers,  pain- 
fully dug  them  out,  the  wind  oftentimes  undoing  in 
a  night  what  it  had  taken  a  month  to  effect.  To 
our  modern  minds,  in  which  the  rooted  tendency  of 
by-gone  ages  to  identify  symbol  and  reality  as  in- 
separably one  no  longer  exists,  it  seems  irreveren- 
tial  to  have  to  translate  so  high-sounding  a  title 
as  "Apis  Mausoleum"  into  "Memphian  Westmin- 
ster Abbey  for  Departed  Bulls."  Such,  however, 
not  in  plain  prose,  but  in  national  veneration,  it 
really  was  I  The  bull,  sacred  to  the  god  Apis,  was 
to  the  initiated  priests  a  symbol  of  power  ;  to  the 
ignorant  multitude,  a  divine  incarnation  in  horns, 
hide,  and  hoofs.  "He  dwelt,"  says  Rawlinson,  "in 
a  temple  of  his  own  near  the  city,  had  his  train  of 
attendant  priests,  his  harem  of  cows,  his  meals  of 
the  choicest  food,  his  grooms  and  curry-combers, 
his  chamberlains  who  made  his  bed,  his  cup-bearers 
who  brought  him  water,  and  on  fixed  days  was  led 
in  a  festive  procession  through  the  main  streets  of 
the  town,  that  the  inhabitants  might  come  forth  to 
make  obeisance.     When  he  died,  he  was  carefully 


KNIGHT-ERRANTS   OF  THE  SHOVEL     283 

embalmed  and  deposited,  together  with  magnificent 
jewels,  statuettes,  and  vases,  in  a  polished  granite 
sarcophagus  cut  out  of  a  single  block  and  weighing 
between  sixty  and  seventy  tons.  The  cost  of  an 
Apis  funeral  amounted  sometimes,  as  we  are  told, 
to  as  much  as  X20,000  sterling." 

While  we  of  to-day  may  smile  at  all  this,  it 
would  have  been  grim  earnest  had  any  one  in  the 
old  Memphian  times  looked  superiorly  askance  at 
this  bovine  divinity,  this  incarnation  of  the  god  on 
earth.  Thirty  centuries  later  a  Boman  soldier  was 
torn  in  pieces  by  a  mob  for  accidentally  killing  a 
cat  sacred  to  some  other  deity.  Indeed,  the  most 
sanguinary  fights  were  always  occurring  between 
rival  townships,  the  one  of  which  deified  the  croco- 
dile, and  the  other  of  which  despised  the  crocodile 
and  exalted  the  snake.  Very  curious  was  it  —  in- 
deed involving  a  mental  wrench  in  the  attempt  to 
get  into  sympathy  with  the  feelings  of  one's  fellow- 
creatures  of  five  thousand  years  ago  that  put  sore 
strain  on  the  imagination  —  to  thread  the  great  un- 
derground passages  in  which,  at  wide  intervals,  had 
been  deposited  twenty-four  sarcophagi  containing 
the  mummified  bodies  of  these  venerated  animals. 
What  magnificent  monuments  of  stone-work  they 
were  !  —  ten  feet  long,  nine  high,  seven  broad,  and 
a  foot  thick,  each  made  out  of  a  single  block  of 
granite  brought  from  five  hundred  miles  away,  cov- 
ered by  devout  inscriptions,  and  all  broken  open 
by  sacrilegious  thieves.  But  the  whole  outside  cir- 
cuit of  the  Serapeum,  dug  out  so  painfully  by  Ma- 
riette,  with   its   propylon,  its   crouching  lions,  its 


284  EGYPT 

avenue  of  sphinxes,  is  now,  alas !  sanded  up  once 
more.  Poor  Keats  in  his  despair  wrote  for  his 
own  epitaph,  "  Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ 
in  water  !  "  What  a  dry  wit  commentary  on  this, 
these  shifting'  sands  effacing  all  record  of  the  he- 
roic toil  of  poor  Mariette  ! 

As  devoted  to  the  earthly  and  eternal  in- 
terests of  a  human  being,  the  Tomb  of  Thi, 
next  visited,  naturally  took  stronger  hold  on  sym- 
pathies rife  in  all  hearts  to-day  than  a  tomb  for 
deified  bulls.  Truly,  the  world  offers  few  more 
impressive  experiences  than  to  be  riding  over  an 
expanse  of  barren  sand-hills,  and  then,  suddenly,  to 
come  upon  a  vast  excavation,  to  descend  its  incline 
to  the  portal  once  on  a  level  with  the  whole  city  of 
the  dead,  and  then  to  find  one's  self  ushered  into  the 
pictured  interior  of  an  Egyptian  mortuary  home. 
"The  Egyptians,"  says  Diodorus,  "call  their  houses 
hostelries,  on  account  of  the  short  period  during 
which  they  inhabit  them  ;  but  they  call  their  tombs 
eternal  dwelling-places.' ' 

Profoundly  one  feels  this  as  he  wanders  through 
the  silent  chambers,  gazes  on  the  infinitely  varied 
scenes  depicted  on  the  walls,  and  tries  to  get  into 
touch  with  a  fellow-mortal,  who,  though  he  died 
five  thousand  years  ago,  seems  so  on  hand  to  wel- 
come one  to  his  abiding  home.  Yes,  the  home  feel- 
ing of  the  Egyptian  tomb  !  With  us  in  America, 
let  a  man  become  rich,  his  first  desire  is  to  build 
himself  a  fine  house  above  ground  and  straightway 
make  it  a  miscellaneous  museum  of  Persian  rugs, 


THE    TOMB   OF    THT  285 

Japanese  bronzes,  carved  Indian  furniture,  and 
Sevres  china.  Not  so  witli  the  Egyptian.  He 
spent  his  life  in  a  plain  house,  and  concentrated 
all  his  wealth,  taste,  and  feeling  for  domestic  com- 
fort on  his  tomb,  experiencing-  as  palpable  zest  in 
fitting'  it  up  as  in  England  or  America  a  wealthy 
young'  fellow  in  arranging  to  his  mind  his  snug- 
gery, with  its  store  of  embroidered  slippers  and 
smoking-caps,  of  Turkish  pipes  and  Havana  cigars, 
of  vellum-bound  books,  crested  writing-paper,  and 
Italian  pictures.  In  just  such  spirit  did  the  wealthy 
Egyptian  spend  half  his  lifetime,  with  an  army  of 
quarrymen,  statuaries,  and  decorative  artists  under 
his  command,  in  getting  his  tomb  exactly  suited  to 
his  taste.  I  use  the  word  taste  advisedly,  for  in 
the  disposition  of  this  tomb  provision  was  made 
for  every  comfort,  every  idiosyncrasy  even  of  body 
and  mind.  Further,  while  with  us  the  bitter  pang 
to  the  rich  man  is  that  no  sooner  may  he  have  got 
ensconced  in  his  costly  mansion  than  death  will 
tear  him  away,  the  Egyptian  counted  securely  on 
at  least  three  thousand  years  of  undisturbed  ten- 
ancy. 

As  one  wanders  through  the  chambers  of  his 
"eternal  dwelling-place,"  and  thinks  of  the  keen 
satisfaction  the  genial  man  must  have  taken  in 
watching,  year  by  year,  the  progress  of  the  work, 
one  fairly  envies  Thi.  He  had  been  poor,  had 
attained  wealth  and  high  rank,  till  finally  he  had 
married  into  the  royal  family.  But  when  riches 
increased,  he  did  not  set  his  heart  on  them  in  any 
but  a  supramundane  sense.     His,  the  solid,  home- 


286  EGYPT 

spun  Egyptian  way  of  interpreting  tlie  text,  "  Lay 
not  up  for  yourself  treasures  upon  earth,  where 
moth  and  rust  do  corrupt  and  thieves  break  through 
and  steal."  Such  perennial  dryness  of  desert  situ- 
ation he  secured  that  no  rust  nor  mould  could  in- 
vade ;  and  as  for  his  treasures,  were  they  not  laid 
up  thick,  and  earthquake  proof,  in  his  tomb,  where 
his  ghostly  double  and  their  ghostly  double  —  the 
real  and  enduring  essence  of  them  both  —  would  live 
on  face  to  face.  How  pleasant  to  contemplate  the 
pictures  of  these  treasures  on  the  walls,  as  Thi,  his 
wife,  and  sons  are  expatiating  over  their  delights  ! 
Plere  he  is  watching  his  servants  bringing  in  on 
their  shoulders  sacks  of  grain  or  fattening  his 
fowls  by  thrusting  pellets  of  meal  down  their 
throats.  Here  he  is  inspecting  his  geese  and 
ducks  swimming  on  a  pond.  Here  he  is  overlook- 
ing his  Nile  boats  laden  with  jars  of  wine  and  bales 
of  goods.  "  Cows  are  crossing  a  ford,  and  cattle 
browse  in  the  meadows.  Oxen  are  ploughing,  the 
seed  is  sown,  the  corn  is  reaped.  Donkeys  are 
brought  up  with  much  fuss  and  use  of  the  stick, 
to  carry  away  the  sheaves  to  the  farm-yard.  Some 
of  the  scenes  are  drawn  with  inimitable  humor." 

Yes,  Thi  would  have  his  laugh  as  well  as  his 
solid  comfort  in  his  "eternal  dwelling-place."  The 
days  had  not  yet  come,  as  under  the  later  empire, 
when  terrible  pictures  were  portrayed  on  the  walls 
of  tombs  of  the  purgatories  and  hells  of  torment 
through  which  the  soul  might  have  to  pass.  All 
was  happy  trust  that  the  best  of  life  but  prefigured 
the  best  of  after  life.    Alone  or  forg^otten  he  would 


THE    TOMB  OF    THI  287 

not  be.  To  his  encluring  mansion  would  come  his 
children,  and  his  children's  children,  to  feast  in  the 
festival  hall,  and  make  him  sympathetically  enjoy 
along  with  them,  though  after  his  own  disembodied 
fashion,  the  flavor  and  smell  of  the  sj)iritual  dou- 
bles of  the  roasts  they  were  consuming  in  their 
ovine  or  bovine  original. 

In  this  naive  way  of  portraying  the  tangible  sat- 
isfactions of  the  life  to  come  there  is,  it  must  be 
confessed,  something  very  winsome.  It  made  me 
think  of  Rev.  John  W.  Chad  wick's  poem,  "-  Climb- 
ing the  Mountain,"  wliere  the  weary  footfarer, 
yearning  for  the  vision  of  what  shall  be  revealed 
on  the  other  side,  at  last  reaches  the  top,  only  to 
find  the  scene  unrolled  as  homelike  and  sweet  as 
that  he  had  left  behind.  Far  more  of  a  prosaic 
photographer  and  less  of  a  spiritual  poet  than  Mr. 
Cliadwick,  the  Egyptian,  but  each  equally  human 
in  his  faith.  Ah!  who  but  has  felt  a  thousand 
times  that  here  in  the  beauty  and  affections  of 
earth  are  all  the  elements  of  the  most  beatific 
vision  of  heaven,  and  that,  if  we  could  but  keep 
our  dear  ones  tight-locked  in  our  arms,  with  death 
at  bay  and  God  close  by,  —  could  but  go  on  cheer- 
ing, illuming,  and  crowning  with  blessings  one  an- 
other's days,  —  we  could  dream  no  fonder  para- 
dise? 


III. 

The  characteristics  of  the  scenery  of  the 
Nile  can  be  more  easily  realized  from  pho- 
tographs than  those  of  any  other  river  in  the 
world,  so  simple  is  the  Nile  in  its  outlines  and 
so  continuously  the  same  from  day  to  day.  Beau- 
tiful the  river  cannot  be  called  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  Rhine  and  Hudson  are  beautiful.  There 
are  no  forest-clad  mountains,  no  rolling  hills,  no 
charm  of  variety  afforded  by  pretty  villages  or 
spire-tipped  cities.  A  comparatively  narrow  sel- 
vage of  cultivation  along  the  banks  —  a  selvage 
sometimes  a  few  yards  and  sometimes  a  few  miles 
wide  —  is  shut  in  on  either  hand  by  barren,  sun- 
scorched  hills  of  limestone  or  by  stretches  of  des- 
ert sand.  The  shapes  of  these  denuded  hills  or 
semi-mountains  are  often  very  picturesque,  and  at 
times  abut  on  the  river's  edge  in  noble  cliffs,  pitted 
all  along  their  lines  of  harder  stratification  with 
entrances  to  cave  tombs,  just  as  with  us  similar 
cliffs  are  pitted  with  holes  into  swallows'  nests.  The 
flora  is  the  most  limited  conceivable.  It  consists 
almost  exclusively  of  mimosas,  sycamore-figs,  and 
date-palms.  With  the  rising  or  setting  sun  be- 
hind their  feathery  tops,  silhouetting  them  darkly 
against  a  rosy  or  opalescent  sky,  these  palms  are 
singularly  beautiful.     Indeed,  everything  in  Egypt 


CHARACTERISTICS   OF  NILE  SCENERY   289 

silhouettes  marvelously.  A  train  of  camels,  with 
their  upward-curving  necks,  horizontal  heads,  and 
long,  gaunt  legs,  reminds  one  irresistibly  o£  the 
picture  Coleridge  draws  in  the  "Ancient  Mariner" 
of  the  sun  raking  through  the  ribs  of  the  phantom 
ship.  Ever  on  the  air  is  the  sound  of  the  creak- 
ing levers  of  the  shadufs  by  which,  standing  tier 
above  tier,  the  natives  lift  from  the  falling  river 
the  irrigating  water.  And  yet,  spite  of  this  con- 
stant monotony,  a  voyage  on  the  Nile  is  singularly 
fascinatino;.  The  air  is  sweet  and  inviooratino-. 
The  barren  hills  take  on  such  varied  colors  under 
the  morning  and  evening  lights  as  to  transfig- 
ure their  arid  reality  into  a  fairy-land  of  aerial 
mirage. 

It  would  prove  only  tedious  to  the  reader  to  at- 
tempt to  drag  him  round  from  tomb  to  tomb,  from 
temple  to  temple.  A  glance  at  a  map  of  the  Nile 
will  give  the  sites,  and  a  brief  study  of  any  illus- 
trated books  on  Egypt  the  pictures,  carvings,  and 
statues,  as  no  pen  can  hope  to  reproduce  them.  All 
that  the  ordinary  tourist  can  hope  to  do  is  to  en- 
liven the  scene  with  some  vividness  of  personal 
impression,  and  to  throw  here  and  there  a  ray  of  in- 
terpreting light  on  what  looks  so  strange  and  gro- 
tesque in  pictured  illustrations  of  the  monuments 
of  Egypt.  Indeed,  the  trouble  with  most  callow 
travelers  in  Egypt,  even  with  the  objects  before 
their  eyes,  is  that  they  get  lost  in  such  a  wilder- 
ness of  details  that  they  "  cannot  see  the  woods  for 
the  trees."  So  exhaustive  a  knowledge  do  they 
struggle  after  of  just  how  many  gums,  spices,  na- 


290  EGYPT 

tron  baths,  amulets,  sacred  extracts,  wrappings  of 
linen,  and  canvas  went  to  the  embalming  of  a  sin- 
gle mummy  as  to  leave  no  brains  for  raising  the 
23reliminary  question  of  why  the  mummy  ever  was 
embalmed  at  all.  With  a  competent  outfit,  per- 
hajDs,  for  the  position  of  an  Egyptian  undertaker, 
they  yet  lack  the  first  requisites  for  that  of  a  ten- 
tative historical  or  theological  observer. 

In  the  description  given  in  the  last  chapter 
of  Thi's  tomb  at  Memphis  allusion  was 
made  to  the  Egyptian  doctrine  of  the  double. 
Now  just  as  surely  as  in  Dr.  Edward  E.  Hale's  in- 
structive story,  "  My  Double  and  How  He  Undid 
Me,"  its  unhappy  writer  was  brought  to  grief  by 
not  fully  taking  in  the  exact  nature  of  his  own 
double,  so  equally  will  every  embryo  student  of 
early  Egyptian  conceptions  of  spirit-life  find  him- 
self "  undone "  if  he  does  not  take  in  the  exact 
nature  of  the  Egyptian's  double.  The  double  is 
fundamental,  as  much  a  part  of  the  man  and  his 
belongings  as  are  his  own  or  their  own  shadows  in 
the  sunshine. 

The  religion  of  the  earlier  days  of  far-away 
Egypt  was  the  most  literally  materialized  system 
of  pantheistic  animism  the  world  ever  saw.  Such 
a  thing  is  there  as  a  poetic  system  of  pantheism 
that  sees  and  feels  Deity  in  high  and  beautiful 
things,  —  in  sky,  mountains,  lakes,  noble  and  be- 
neficent human  lives,  —  but  which  finds  itself  dis- 
inclined to  indulge  in  the  same  devout  emotions 
over  chairs,  tables,  brooms,  crocodiles,  snakes,  and 


PANTHEISTIC  ANIMISM  291 

cats,  —  rather  is  secretly  disposed  to  the  belief 
that,  somehow  or  other,  the  devil  had  a  hand  in 
them.  This  higher  poetic  system  of  pantheism 
believes,  indeed,  in  the  body  as  the  tabernacle  of 
soul,  especially  when  body  takes  the  shape  of  the 
luminous  eyes  of  a  beautiful  woman  or  of  the 
broad,  meditative  brow  of  a  sage,  but  feels  little 
spiritual  interest  in  such  organs  as  the  liver,  spleen, 
and  pancreas,  —  indeed,  is  inclined  to  think,  very 
much  as  Emerson  put  it,  that  we  could  get  on  just 
as  well  without  them.  If  it  dreams  of  continued 
existence  beyond  the  earthly  life,  this  same  poetic 
system  of  pantheism  yearns  for  such  existence  in 
an  etherealized  shape,  —  in  a  state,  indeed,  in  which 
there  shall  be  no  more  vulgar  buying  and  selling ; 
no  more  marketing  for  fish,  flesh,  and  vegetables ; 
no  more  pew-rents  for  spiritual  consolation  ;  no 
more  doctors  nor  apothecary  shops.  And  yet,  in 
the  higher  realm,  it  would  retain  Beulah  moun- 
tains and  lakes,  music  beyond  that  of  Beethoven 
and  Mozart,  inspirers  rapt  in  the  visions  of  an  Isa- 
iah, or  a  St.  John  at  Patmos ;  for  these  things  seem 
all  divine. 

Not  at  all  in  this  sublimated  way,  however,  do 
the  more  ancient  Egyptians  appear  to  have  felt. 
In  the  mass  they  were  the  most  prosaically  im- 
aginative people  conceivable,  shut  up  to  celestial 
yearnings  for  a  sort  of  everlasting  Dutch  tulip 
garden  and  a  pipe  beside  a  canal.  For  the  ade- 
quate enjoyment  of  this  they  wanted  the  body, 
and  the  whole  of  it,  —  hair,  nails,  skin,  viscera ; 
for  each  of  these  had  its  double  who,  if  they  did 


292  EGYPT 

not  keep  a  sharp  lookout,  would  be  sure  to  undo 
them.  Therefore,  no  endearing  little  cherubs  for 
them,  amputated  just  below  the  shoulders  ! 

I  must  be  permitted  the  use  of  very  plain  lan- 
guage or  give  up  any  attempt  at  being  faithful  to 
fact.  In  truth,  it  is  failure  to  resort  to  plain  lan- 
guage and  plain  corresponding  ideas  that  makes 
so  much  that  is  written  about  this  land  of  marvel 
hazy  and  unreal.  An  Egyptian's  tomb  was  indeed 
his  spirit  house,  but,  as  any  one  can  see  with  half 
an  eye,  a  house  in  which  his  spirit  needed  his  ap- 
petite, his  bed,  his  three  meals  a  day,  his  ser- 
vants, his  farm  and  kitchen-garden,  his  bath,  his 
cat  and  dog,  even  his  doctor  and  his  pills.  All 
these  he  could  enjoy  in  a  strange  spiritual-material 
way,  for  every  one  of  these  objects,  even  a  carved 
or  painted  figure  of  one  of  them,  possessed  or  was 
possessed  by  its  corresponding  double.  Thus,  a 
chair  that  could  be  sat  on  by  a  living  man  weigh- 
ing two  hundred  pounds  had  its  phantasmal  double 
that  could  be  sat  on  by  a  spirit  weighing  nothing, 
each  in  his  own  especial  way.  Thus,  a  savory  roast 
of  flesh,  that  could  be  inhaled  with  gusto  by  re- 
sponsive material  nostrils,  could  in  its  double  be 
inhaled  by  spiritual  nostrils ;  indeed,  the  meat  it- 
self or  its  etherealized  Liebig  extract  equally  well 
masticated  and  digested  by  material  or  by  spirit- 
ual teeth  and  alimentary  canals.  But  teeth  and 
alimentary  canals  of  either  kind  there  must  be,  or 
a  spirit  would  find  himself  as  ill  provided  in  his 
tomb  as  a  solid  man  in  the  flesh  at  his  dinner-table. 
Without  realizing  all  this  to  our  minds,  after  the 


PANTHEISTIC  ANIMISM  293 

most  literal  and  downright  fashion,  we  shall  make 
no  step  of  headway  in  getting  into  touch  with  the 
vast  tomb-world  environing  us.  It  is  the  old  Egyii- 
tian  we  are  talking  about,  not  about  ourselves. 
Where  we  smile,  he  was  in  dead  earnest. 

Now  for  the  first  time  are  we  in  position  to  un- 
derstand why,  in  the  Egypt  of  old,  such  enormous 
sums  were  lavished  on  the  fitting  up  of  tombs,  such 
costly  and  elaborate  processes  of  embalming  re- 
sorted to,  such  endless  galleries  painted  with  wall 
pictures  of  all  conceivable  objects,  the  double  of 
each  one  of  which  stood  in  immediate  relation  with 
the  convenience  or  luxury  of  the  double  of  the  oc- 
cupant himself,  at  last  settled  in  his  "  eternal  dwell- 
ing-place." Just  as  literally  as  any  one  of  us  would 
feel  utterly  nonplussed  and  miserable  on  returning 
to  his  home  in  New  York  or  Boston  to  find  there 
no  chairs,  no  carpets,  no  cups  and  saucers,  no  meat 
in  the  larder,  no  family  to  greet  him,  no  books  to 
read,  no  Bridget  in  the  kitchen,  exactly  in  the  same 
way  did  the  old  Egyptian  spirit  feel  about  his 
tomb.  In  wrath  and  exasperation  would  he  haunt 
and  make  unendurable  the  lives  of  the  son  or 
daughter  or  wife  who  had  subjected  him  to  such  in- 
tolerable privations.  And  while  the  minute  and 
commonplace  fidelity  to  details  with  which  all  this 
was  believed  in  and  carried  out  often  strikes  our 
minds  in  an  irresistibly  humorous  light,  to  an 
Egyptian  it  was  a  matter  of  such  serious  import, 
that  any  neglect  of  it  would  have  set  his  spirit  as 
much  beside  itself  as  the  temper  of  the  average 
American  householder,  who,  on  returning  of  a  cold 


294  EGYPT 

night  to  his  home,  should  find  just  such  a  carpet- 
less,  bed-less,  meat-less  scene  of  distraction  as  was 
but  now  alluded  to. 

"  A  fellow-feeling  makes  us  wondrous  kind,"  and 
of  what  use  is  historic  imagination  unless  it  can 
be  raised  to  a  vivid  enough  pitch  to  enable  one  to 
"  put  himself  in  the  place  "  of  a  justly  aggrieved 
fellow-creature  of  five  thousand  years  ago  ?  But 
when  all  went  well,  and  wife  and  son  were  tender 
and  loyal,  what  comfort  and  satisfaction  in  the 
dear  home-tomb  !  Truly  life  is  sweet,  and  a  plea- 
sant thing  is  it  to  behold  the  sun.  There  the  sun 
still  shone,  the  harvests  waved,  the  birds  sailed 
through  the  skies,  and  the  fishes  leaped  in  the 
Nile.  Alas !  for  the  man  who  has  not  learned  to 
live  into  the  heart  of,  to  join  in  the  wealth  of,  the 
spiritual  double  in  all  things.  Teach  us,  O  Egyp- 
tians, teach  us  the  profundity  of  thy  love  ! 

Very  different  is  the  impression  made  by  the 
tombs  of  the  later  dynasties.  The  priest- 
hood has  become  a  gigantic  hierarchical  power ; 
and  the  change  in  the  pictorial  emblems  on  the 
walls  is  as  marked  as  in  Europe  between  the  earlier 
spiritual  conceptions  of  the  Gospels  and  the  em- 
bodiment of  all  mediseval  theology  in  the  Hell, 
Purgatory,  and  Paradise  of  Dante.  The  body  is 
still  embalmed,  the  tomb  is  still  the  double's  home, 
offerings  are  still  made,  and  the  old,  familiar  every- 
day scenes  are  on  the  walls.  No  outright  break 
has  been  made  with  old  ideas ;  and  they  live  on 
in  juxtaposition,  no  matter  how  incongruous  with 


LATER   TOMBS  295 

one  another.  But  the  whole  scale  of  proportion  is 
tipped  the  other  way.  The  sense  of  personal  ac- 
countability for  the  life  on  earth  is  now  the  pre- 
ponderating feeling.  The  gods  have  assumed  more 
definite  attributes.  The  forty-two  judges  at  the 
awful  day  demand  each  his  categorical  answer  as 
to  sins  of  lying,  stealing,  adultery,  bearing  false 
witness.  In  the  presence  of  the  gods  the  heart  is 
weighed  against  a  feather,  emblem  of  truth  and 
right,  that  under  no  gust  of  passion  must  swerve  a 
hair.  Thoth,  the  righteous  judge,  writes  down  the 
record  and  passes  sentence ;  while  Anubis  watches 
the  indicator  of  the  balance,  and  behind  him  stands 
a  devouring  monster  in  waiting  to  seize  upon  the 
wicked.  The  judgment  over,  here  a  soul  is  changed 
into  a  hog  for  its  sensuality,  here  is  torn  to  pieces 
by  the  "Devourer,"  here  is  led  into  the  blessed 
presence  of  Osiris. 

Such,  in  million-fokl  forms,  are  the  scenes  now 
presented,  as  one  threads  the  long  passages  and 
comes  out  into  the  pillai-ed  halls  of  tombs  extend- 
ing, perhaps,  five  hundred  feet  into  the  solid  rock. 
The  figures  are  carved  or  stamped  in  low  relief, 
and  colored.  So  incalculable  their  number,  even  in 
the  few  burial-places  that  have  been  opened,  that 
one  feels  as  though  the  entire  population  of  Egypt 
must  have  been  engrossed  in  this  one  work,  with 
no  time  left  for  sowing  or  reaping.  And  yet  the 
marvelous  thing  to  think  of  is,  that  all  this  Dres- 
den or  Munich  gallery,  finally  completed  by  its 
army  of  artists  and  artisans,  was  thenceforth  never 
further  to  be  beheld  by  any  human  eye.     Perils  to 


296  EGYPT 

the  dead  have  increased.  Strengtli  of  masonry  can 
no  longer  be  trusted  to,  and  concealment  must  be 
the  hope.  The  mummy  once  deposited,  the  en- 
trance was  stoned  up,  the  cliff  broken  down,  and 
every  possible  trace  of  the  whereabouts  of  the 
tomb  destroyed.  There  were  no  more  reception- 
rooms  or  festal  halls.  The  days  of  the  former 
pleasant,  social  intercourse  between  the  dead  and 
the  living  had  gone,  and  the  simple  supramundane 
had  passed  over  into  the  supernatural.  Amenti, 
the  heaven  of  the  departed,  now  lay  in  remote  re- 
gions in  the  west,  across  the  Libyan  Desert. 

Now,  in  perfect  sincerity,  what  is  the  inevitable 
impression  made  on  a  reflective  mind  of  to-day  by 
these  pictorial  representations  of  death,  arraign- 
ment before  the  last  tribunal,  judgment,  penalty, 
introduction  to  the  blessed  abode  of  Osiris  ?  It  is 
and  it  must  be  the  strangest  conceivable  admixture 
of  the  pathetic  and  sublime  with  the  grotesque  and 
ludicrous.  The  first  entrance  is  inevitably  solem- 
nizing. You  pass  in  under  the  brow  of  the  great 
cliff.  You  thread  rock-hewn  passages  and  halls, 
with  the  oppressive  sense,  so  usual  in  caves,  of  the 
weight  of  the  superincumbent  mountain.  It  is 
pitch  dark,  and  you  light  your  way  with  a  candle 
held  up  close  to  the  pictures  to  examine  them. 
Every  now  and  then  leaps  out  the  flash  of  a  bit  of 
burning  magnesium  wire.  Rembrandtesque  effects 
of  whitest  light  contrasted  with  blackest  shadow 
reveal  in  sharp  distinctness  long  stretches  of  ]Ac,- 
tured  wall  and  ceiling.  The  great  theme  perpetu- 
ally present  with  every  one  who,  heir  to  the  sense 


LATER   TOMBS  297 

of  moral  accountability,  yet  trusts  in  a  final  beati- 
fic vision  of  God,  is  the  theme  before  the  eyes,  as, 
thousands  of  years  ago,  it  engrossed  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  myriads  of  one's  fellow-creatures.  More 
solemnizing  thoughts,  in  their  spiritual  import, 
than  those  that  underlie  these  pictorial  representa- 
tions cannot  be  entertained  by  the  human  mind. 
They  are,  as  I  said  but  now,  the  recognition  of  an 
immutable  moral  law  before  which  Pharaoh  and 
peasant  alike  must  bow,  and  which  here  is  seen 
administered  without  fear  or  favor  by  divinities, 
each  one  of  whom  is  an  incarnation  of  some  aspect 
of  immutable  law.  He  must  be  a  brute,  and  not  a 
man,  who  does  not  feel  a  sense  of  awe  in  such  an 
Egyptian  tomb.  But  now  to  turn  to  the  other  side 
of  the  appeal  made  to  mind  and  feeling. 

"  Thou  art  weighed  in  the  balance,  and  found 
wanting."  How  sublime  and  moving  this  judg- 
ment, as  it  falls  from  the  lips  of  a  Hebrew  prophet 
over  a  once  mighty  king!  We  can  understand 
how  a  Washington  Allston  biu-ned  his  life  to  ashes 
in  his  vain  struggle  to  giv^e  satisfying  expression 
to  it  on  his  canvas.  But  how,  in  conti*ast,  did  the 
old  Egyptian  portray  the  scene  of  weighing  the 
value  of  a  human  heart?  He  presented  it  in  a  pic- 
ture of  a  horizontal  balance,  such  as  was  daily  used 
in  the  mai-ket  for  weighing  grain  or  swine,  with  a 
vase  with  a  heart  in  it  on  the  one  platform,  and  on 
the  other  an  upright  feather.  The  god  Anubis, 
who  is  touching  the  indicator  with  the  tip  of  his 
finger,  —  through  what  eyes  is  he  reading  the  mo- 
mentous record?     Through  the  eyes  of  a  jackal, 


298  EGYPT 

set  in  the  head  of  a  long-eared  jackal.  Thoth,  the 
righteous  judge  of  the  great  cycle  of  the  gods,  who 
is  writing  down  on  a  tablet  the  result  of  the  judg- 
ment, —  there  he  stands,  peering  over  his  tablet 
with  the  head  and  long  bill  of  an  ibis.  Horus,  a 
man-headed  bird  who  conducts  the  soul  to  the  awful 
bar  of  judgment,  is  himself  a  hawk-headed  Mer- 
cury. Osiris,  the  beatific  vision  of  whom  is  finally 
granted  as  the  highest  bliss  of  the  soul,  who  would 
ever  want  to  see  him,  —  a  swathed  and  bandaged 
mummy,  with  the  crown  of  Upper  Egypt  a-top  ? 
Ah !  what  a  remove  from  Shakespeare's  "  What  a 
piece  of  work  is  a  man !  how  noble  in  reason !  how 
infinite  in  faculty !  in  form  and  moving  how  ex- 
press and  admirable  !  in  action  how  like  an  angel ! 
in  apprehension  how  like  a  god!  " 

Such  a  motley  masquerade  of  animal-headed  di- 
vinities interferes  sadly,  it  must  be  confessed,  with 
the  due  seriousness  of  mind  with  which  one  would 
contemplate  such  awful  subjects.  Of  course,  one 
knows  that  these  animal  substitutes  for  the  regal 
crown  of  the  body  in  which  reason  is  supposed  to 
be  enthroned  are  to  be  taken  symbolically.  But 
there  are  symbols  and  symbols.  To  the  modern 
man  who  has  lost  all  vital  touch  with  these,  the 
pictures  so  parody  the  solemn  theme  as  to  suggest 
the  final  judgment-day  of  jackals  and  hippopotami. 
The  incongruity  puts  too  severe  a  strain  on  the 
average  mind  to  leave  it  duly  impressed  with  such 
supernatural  reasoners  on  "  temperance,  righteous- 
ness, and  judgment  to  come,"  and  so  makes  the  in- 
terest largely  archaeological.      And  yet  these  hawk 


LATER   TOMBS  299 

and  jackal  headed  divinities  go  so  seriously  about 
their  business,  and  seem  so  naively  unconscious  of 
how  queer  they  look  to  us,  that  by  degrees  their 
earnestness  communicates  itself  to  the  feelings,  till 
the  picture  becomes,  in  a  way,  affecting.  One's 
own  mind  grows  Egyptianized.  It  helps,  too,  to- 
ward feeling  with  solemnity  what  these  pictured 
scenes  meant  to  those  who  of  old  looked  on  them, 
to  read  translations  of  the  hieroglyphics  written 
above  and  beside  them.  These  contain  most  touch- 
ing prayers,  records  of  just  and  righteous  judg- 
ments, summaries  of  the  whole  duty  of  man  as 
bound  up  in  the  command  to  do  justly,  love  mercy, 
and  walk  humbly  with  God.  Still,  in  setting  down 
honestly  the  strangely  contrasting  impressions  sure 
to  be  made  on  the  spectator,  it  must  be  clearly  un- 
derstood that  one  has  first  to  accustom  himself  to 
seeing,  for  example,  Amen-Ra,  the  highest  divinity 
of  Egypt,  the  one  of  whom,  through  whom,  and 
to  whom  are  all  things,  presented  in  the  guise  of 
a  naked  man,  a  necldace  on  his  breast,  bracelets 
on  his  arms,  anklets  on  his  legs,  and  a  high  feather 
in  his  caj),  and,  that  done,  to  reconcile,  as  best  he 
can,  the  picture  with  so  sublime  an  invocation  as 
that  of  the  following  hymn  :  — 

"  Hail  to  thee,  Lord  God  of  law, 
Thee  whose  shrine  none  ever  saw ! 


Forms  to  all  the  men  that  be, 
Color  and  variety, 
By  his  fiat  are  assigned. 
Unto  him  the  poor  men  cry. 
And  he  helps  them  in  distress. 
Kind  of  hea;  t  is  he  to  all 


300  EGYPT 

Who  upon  him  called, 

God  Almighty  to  deliver 

Him  that  is  afraid  and  meek 

From  the  great  ones  who  oppress, 

Judging  ever 

'Twixt  the  strong  and  weak." 


Many  superior  people  at  home  who  have  de- 
rived their  whole  idea  of  Egyptian  religion  and  of 
Egyptian  conceptions  of  the  realms  beyond  from 
the  most  spiritual  passages  in  the  "  Book  of  the 
Dead,"  or  from  the  profoundest  comments  of 
Herodotus,  Plato,  and  Plutarch,  will  perhaps  be 
shocked  at  expressions  one  has  to  use  in  simply 
reporting  what  his  own  eyes  see.  After  rising  in 
an  exalted  frame  of  mind  from  reading  Plutarch's 
"  Isis  and  Osiris,"  such  natures  do  not  like  to  hear 
that  among  the  mighty  dead  of  the  Del-el-Bahara 
cavern-tombs  on  the  lonely  Libyan  hills,  it  was 
found,  for  example,  that  Queen  Uast-em-Khebit 
was  laid  away  to  rest  fully  fitted  out  for  the  resur- 
rection morn  with  a  supply  of  curled  and  frizzled 
wigs.  Not,  indeed,  that  curled  and  frizzled  wigs 
are  much  more  incongruous  with  so  triumphant 
an  occasion  than,  religiously  speaking,  are  analo- 
gous displays  of  head-gear  that  with  us  flower  out 
on  Easter  Sunday,  or  that  we  are  especially  war- 
ranted in  throwing  stones  at  our  poor  mummy 
sisters  for  feeling  the  ruling  passion  strong  in 
death!  Only  in  Egypt,  with  such  a  backgroimd 
of  the  ages,  and  when  one  has  seen  the  individual 
royal  mummy  that  did  it  such  aeons  since,  the 
levity  strikes   home    in   a  more    solemnizing,  per- 


LATER   TOMBS  301 

haps  a  more  pathetic  way,  bringing  out  in  us  the 
Hamlet  feeling  over  poor  Yorick's  skull :  "  Now 
get  you  to  my  lady's  chamber,  and  tell  her,  let  her 
paint  an  inch  thick,  to  this  favor  she  must  come ; 
make  her  laugh  at  that !  " 

Yes,  Egypt  is  the  land  of  contrasts.  Not  for  a 
moment  can  the  thoughtful  man  forget  that  he 
stands  on  a  soil  where  the  initiated  and  elect  could 
declare  of  absolute  Deity,  "  He  is  not  graven  in 
marble.  He  is  not  beheld.  His  abode  is  not 
known.  No  shrine  is  found  with  painted  figures 
of  him.  There  is  no  building  that  can  contain 
him.  .  .  .  His  commencement  is  from  the  beg-in- 
ning.  He  doth  not  manifest  his  forms.  Vain  are 
all  representations."  Then,  in  contrast,  as  the 
visitor  opens  his  eyes  and  looks  about  him,  lo  ! 
this  wilderness  of  representations  largely  in  what 
are  to  us  the  most  repulsive  animal  shapes ;  this 
nation  of  priestly  undertakers  reducing  to  a  lucra- 
tive trade  the  whole  business  of  supplying  the  de- 
parting spirits  with  circumstantial,  extramundane 
Baedekers,  in  which  every  inch  of  the  sorely  beset 
way  to  the  heaven  of  Osiris  is  mapped  out,  with 
specific  directions  as  to  just  what  amount  of  hak- 
shish  is  enough  for  this  or  that  obstructing  fiend, 
and  just  what  fulsome  ceremonial  titles  will  please 
the  ear  and  secure  the  favor  of  this  or  that  celestial 
protector. 

Again  and  again  has  Robert  Browning  given 
eloquent  expression  to  his  conviction  that  if  the 
glorious  hope  of  immortality  were  degraded  from 
a  sublime  trust  of  the  higher  instincts  of  the  soul 


302  EGYPT 

into  a  dead-level  sense-demonstration  of  external 
fact,  it  woidd  remove  all  tliat  is  most  uplifting  and 
purifying.  Too  often,  in  Egypt,  would  he  have  felt 
this  conviction  reinforced  with  the  weary  weight  of 
all  the  colossal  stones  piled  on  top  of  the  material- 
ized dogma.  Excess  of  contact  with  its  dusty  prose 
and  dreary  literalism  would,  I  am  sure,  have  broken 
the  wings  of  the  spiritually  soaring  poet,  till  never 
there  could  he  have  hailed  his  own  arisen  one  in 
the  strain,  — 

"  My  lyric  love,  half  angel  and  half  bird !  " 

So  far  I  have  spoken  but  of  pyramids  and 
tombs  ;  while  it  is  among  the  ruins  of  the 
great  temples  of  Abydos,  Denderah,  Edfu,  Luxor, 
Karnak,  Philae,  that  the  mind  is  bowed  under  the 
overpowering  sense  of  the  colossal  and  fairly  super- 
human genivis  of  the  Egypt  of  the  past.  Again 
and  again  one  shrinks  at  the  thought  of  attemj)t- 
ing  to  say  anything  about  these  temples,  and  goes 
on  to  something  else.  Indeed,  what  can  one  say? 
There  are  certain  sensations  we  are  wont  to  call 
elemental,  so  massive  are  they,  so  overwhelming, 
so  submerged  in  the  very  substance  of  feeling 
never  to  be  defined  or  analyzed.  The  ocean,  the 
Himalayas,  the  Book  of  Job,  the  "  Fifth  Sym- 
phony," Rembrandt's  "  Night  Watch,"  awaken  in 
us  this  elemental  sense.  Always  in  the  effect  pro- 
duced there  is  involved  the  overpowering  weight  of 
material  mass  ;  here,  in  a  Beethoven  as  in  a  press- 
ure as  of  seven  atmospheres  of  sound  ;  here,  in 
a  Rembrandt  as  in  the  tangible  presence  of  vast 


THE   TEMPLES   OF  EGYPT  303 

realms  through  which  is  enacting  the  colossal  strug- 
gle of  light  with  darkness.  It  is  the  sense  of  thus 
dealing  with  the  elemental  that  stirs  up  from  the 
foundation  the  oceanic  depths  in  genius,  and  fur- 
nishes shaping  substance  for  its  stupendous  con- 
ceptions. For  a  more  fitting  expression,  then,  of 
what  this  meant  to  the  Egyptian  of  the  far  past, 
I  know  not  better  where  to  turn  than  to  the  words 
of  one  who,  thousands  of  years  ago,  thus  recorded 
his  own  feeling  on  being  led  into  the  awful  pres- 
ence of  the  Pharaoh  :  "  I  was  as  one  brought  out 
of  the  dark.  My  tongue  was  dumb,  my  lips  failed 
me,  my  heart  was  no  longer  in  my  body  to  know 
whether  I  was  alive  or  dead." 

"  The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wis- 
dom," said  the  deep  heart  of  the  Hebrew  race. 
Without  the  sense  of  overwhelming  awe,  the  sense 
of  nothingness,  how  shall  the  poor  conceit  of  man 
be  humbled  in  the  dust  ?  Yet,  there  is  the  pros- 
tration of  the  cowering  slave  ;  and  there  is  the 
prostration  of  the  saint  or  prophet  hushed  in  ad- 
oration, and  with  no  words  on  his  lips  but  "  Not 
unto  me  !  "  Never  in  any  other  temples  reared 
by  the  hand  of  man  do  mind  and  heart  so  feel 
this  sense  of  the  finite  overwhelmed  by  the  in- 
finite, in  naked,  dominating  simplicity,  as  in  the 
Egyptian.  It  is  all  tliere  in  the  sublimest  Gothic 
cathedrals  ;  but  it  is  there  blent  with  beauty,  up- 
lifted by  triumphant  soaring,  and  glorified  with 
rainbow  hues  of  vision.  In  Egypt  it  stands  out 
alone. 

What  a  tiny  ant  crawling  along  the  base  of  a 


304  EGYPT 

mountain  does  a  man  feel  himself  as  he  enters  a 
temj)le  like  Luxor !  Colossal  statues  forty  feet  in 
height,  seated  in  the  immortal  calm  of  ages,  con- 
front him  with  their  awful  silence  till  his  own  finite 
griefs  and  petty  ambitions  dwindle  to  the  insig- 
nificant trifles  of  an  hour.  He  walks  along  ave- 
nues of  columns  so  enormous  in  mass  and  height 
that  the  overthrow  of  one  of  them  would  crush 
an  army  of  such  insects  as  himself ;  and  yet  all 
around  him  they  lie,  fallen,  fallen,  fallen.  His 
thought  is  dealing  with  dynasties  so  remote,  em- 
bodied in  royal  shapes  so  colossal  and  in  memo- 
rial temples  so  stupendous,  as  to  seem  the  record 
of  a  story  that  shall  never  perish.  And  yet,  in  the 
presence  of  eternity,  nay,  of  time  itself,  what  are 
they  to  be  likened  unto  but  the  dust  blown  from 
the  balance.  It  is,  then,  this  sense  of  prostration 
beneath  what  at  first  seems  utterly  incommensura- 
ble with  the  grasp  of  the  human  mind  that  consti- 
tutes the  "  fear  of  the  Lord  which  is  the  beginning 
of  wisdom"  in  the  appreciation  of  an  Egyptian 
temple.  Not  that  it  continues  a  slavish  fear. 
No !  "  He  that  humbleth  himself  shall  be  ex- 
alted," and  at  last  the  exaltation  comes.  For  is 
it  not  witness  of  a  spirit  that  has  within  itself  the 
keynote  of  vibration  in  harmony  with  all  this 
immensity,  that  man  can  finally  so  surmount  the 
sense  of  prostrate  awe  as  to  feel  in  all  this  mighty 
Presence  but  a  symbol  of  his  own  eternity  ?  Luxor 
and  Karnak !  in  such  a  presence  the  most  average 
mind  is  lifted  into  a  realm  in  which  it  seems  native 
to  think  and  feel  in  the  strain  of  a  Pascal :  "  Man 


THE   TEMPLES   OF  EGYPT  305 

is  but  a  reed,  the  weakest  in  nature,  but  he  is  a 
thinking  reed.  It  is  not  necessary  that  the  entire 
universe  arm  itself  to  crush  him.  A  breath  of  air, 
a  drop  of  water,  suffices  to  kill  him.  But  were 
the  universe  to  crush  him,  man  would  still  be  more 
noble  than  that  which  kills  him,  because  he  knows 
that  he  dies,  while  the  universe  knows  nothing  of 
the  power  it  has  over  him." 

The  first  great  Egyptian  temple  visited  on  the 
way  up  the  Nile  is  that  of  Denderah.  In  the  ap- 
proach to  it  one  encounters  what  is  the  perpetual 
marvel  of  the  Egypt  now  revealed  to-day.  Here  is 
a  vast  structure  that  for  ages  was  buried  up  from 
sight.  The  winds  of  the  desert  blew  in  the  sands. 
Generation  after  generation  of  men  built  up  their 
habitations  of  clay  about  it,  till  the  walls  were 
hidden  ;  and  then  generation  after  generation  plas- 
tered their  mud  huts,  foul  as  crows'  nests,  over  the 
gigantic  blocks  of  the  roofs.  Now  all  is  cleared 
away  from  within  and  without ;  and  you  thank 
God  for  the  sands  of  the  desert  and  the  potsherds 
of  the  peasants,  as  the  actual  angels'  wings  that 
sheltered  these  priceless  treasures  against  the  van- 
dalism of  nature  and  man.  Fresh  cut  as  of  yester- 
day come  out  the  carvings. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  describe  the  shape  and 
arrangement  of  the  Egyptian  temple.  Familiarity 
with  these  must  be  gained  from  engravings  and 
photographs.  One  does  not,  as  a  general  rule, 
enter  their  porticoes  as  he  does  the  open  porticoes 
of  Greek  temples.  A  screen  is  built  up  half-way 
high  between  the  outer  columns,  all  the  way  along 


306  EGYPT 

the  front,  except  between  the  two  of  them  that 
open  up  the  entrance.  They  thus  subserve  the 
end  of  portico-halls  rather  than  of  porticoes,  — 
a  feature  greatly  enhancing  their  impressiveness 
through  the  stupendous  effects  of  light  and  dark- 
ness. One  enters.  Phj^sically  and  literally,  the 
breathing  is  arrested  and  the  heart  almost  stops  its 
beating.  Such  a  forest  of  gigantic  columns,  such 
a  Druid  grove  in  stone,  such  mysterious  depths  in 
the  roofing  overhead  and  in  the  vista  of  the  halls 
opening  out  beyond  !  There  are  those  who  would 
call  this  the  feeling  of  the  barbarian.  Then  glo- 
riously confess  the  barbarian's  love  of  prostration 
beneath  an  overpowering  sensation.  Boldly  say 
that  in  comparison  with  the  effect  wrought  by 
such  a  portico-hall  as  that  of  Denderah,  the  effect 
of  any  such  famous  portico  as  that  of  the  Pan- 
theon in  Eome  is  but  as  that  of  a  pretty  cluster 
of  birch  saplings  to  a  California  grove  of  giant 
redwoods.  When  in  the  forest  a  group  of  tree- 
trunks  takes  your  breath  away,  when  it  awes  you 
with  the  sense  of  thousands  of  years  of  growth, 
when  you  have  to  look  up  and  up  to  cope  with  its 
majestic  branching  overhead,  when  you  behold  its 
mighty  base  in  brilliant  sunshine,  and  its  dome 
overhead  a  vault  of  darkness  and  mystery,  then 
first  you  get  the  sublime  of  what  may  fitly  be 
called  elemental  arboreal  sensation.  This  awful 
secret  in  stone  the  Egyptians  knew  as  none  that 
have  ever  lived  before  or  since. 

All  through  the  course  of  human  history  man 
bears  witness  to  the  fact  how  keenly  he  suffers  in 


THE   TEMPLES   OF  EGYPT  307 

presence  of  tlie  overwhelming  powers  about  him, 
through  the  sense  o£  physical  littleness  and  limi- 
tation. Against  this  he  struggles  with  straining- 
heart.  His  arm  is  puny ;  and,  to  supplement  it, 
he  invents  levers  and  cranes.  His  eye  is  feeble  ; 
and,  to  give  it  range,  he  thinks  out  the  telescope. 
His  voice  is  weak  and  monotonous ;  and,  to  impart 
to  it  resonance  and  variety,  he  compasses  the  trum- 
pet, the  drum,  the  organ,  the  violin.  Then  he 
rises  into  freedom.  Mind  no  longer  dominated 
by  brute  matter,  every  force  in  matter  becomes 
an  attribute  of  mind.  This  freedom  the  Egyptians 
achieved  through  Titan  power  of  handling  enor- 
mous masses,  and  shaping  them  into  a  Titanic 
world.  Their  Pharaoh  I  A  block  of  granite  fifty 
feet  in  height,  twenty  to  thirty  in  length  and 
breadth,  and  weighing  a  thousand  tons,  alone  could 
serve  for  the  statue  that  should  give  adequate  ex- 
pression to  the  weight  of  his  authorit}^,  the  immov- 
able foundation  of  his  reign.  For  what  did  he 
stand  to  them  ?  For  a  god  upon  earth.  "  Thou 
art  like  the  sun  in  all  that  thou  doest.  Shouldst 
thou  wish  to  make  it  day  during  the  night,  it  is  so 
forthwith.  If  thou  say  est  to  the  water,  '  Come 
from  the  rock,'  it  will  come  in  a  torrent  sud- 
denly, at  the  word  of  thy  mouth.  The  god  Ra  is 
like  thee  in  his  limbs,  the  god  Khepra  in  creative 
force."  Therefore,  when,  in  the  Book  of  Exodus, 
the  God  of  the  Hebrews  hardens  Pharaoh's  heart, 
it  is  that  He  may  "  show  his  power,"  even  over  so 
awful  a  being,  and  "  get  glory  of  him."  All  this 
awe  and  prostration  before  the  Pharaoh's  might 


308  EGYPT 

the  Egyptian  temple  bodies  forth.  The  Egyptians, 
too,  hardened  the  heart  of  the  rock,  and  made  it 
brute,  sullen,  and  rebellious,  that  they  might  show 
their  power  over  it,  and  compel  it  to  reveal  their 
glory. 

And  how  the  rock  does  reveal  their  glory ! 
This  is  the  dominating  feeling,  as  one  wanders 
among  the  ruins  of  their  temples,  with  at  first  a 
feeling  of  dazed,  prostrate  awe,  and  at  last  a  feel- 
ing of  exultation.  The  builders  will  touch  no 
stone  that  would  not  leave  other  builders  aghast 
at  the  bare  thought  of  moving  it.  They  roof  with 
slabs  thirty  feet  long,  seven  wide,  and  four  thick, 
as  we  would  roof  with  slates.  Each  column,  each 
capital,  each  architrave,  each  ceiling,  carries  with 
it  the  sense  of  fear  and  trembling  crowned  with 
triumph.  Our  very  ignorance  of  the  means  em- 
ployed adds  the  feeling  of  supernatural  mystery, 
till  the  giant  colossi,  seated  immovable  on  their 
thrones,  seem  but  images  in  their  natural  size  of 
the  sole  beings  who  could  rear  such  structures. 
And  yet,  withal,  how  is  all  tempered  with  beauty ! 

A  few  trivial  figures  sometimes  help  the  mind 
as  scales  of  i-elative  proportion,  though  personally, 
I  must  confess,  I  have  never  felt  profoundly  in- 
debted to  the  tape  measure  for  more  impressive 
estimates  of  the  sublime.  Still,  to  try  the  experi- 
ment on  a  single  feature  of  one  of  the  stupendous 
columns  in  the  "  Great  Hall "  of  Karnak !  It  is 
computed  that  on  top  of  one  of  the  lotus-leaved 
capitals  of  these  columns  one  hundred  and  fifty 
to  two  hundred  men  could  stand.     Well,  in  imagi- 


THE   TEMPLES   OF  EGYPT  309 

nation  set  the  dwarfed  creatures  up  there  like  a 
swarm  of  flies,  and  stand  off  for  a  look  at  them. 
How  maliciously  would  Dean  Swift  have  reveled 
in  the  sight,  delectable  as  anything-  he  devised  in 
Brobdingnag !  With  what  a  sardonic  smile  would 
he  have  doffed  his  shovel  hat  in  deferential  con- 
tempt to  the  little  midgets !  And  yet  in  the  very 
act  of  degrading  he  would  but  have  exalted  them. 
The  midgets  built  the  stupendous  temple- 
In  this  single  hall  there  are  twelve  of  these 
massive  columns,  each  thirty-six  feet  in  circumfer- 
ence and  eighty  feet  in  height,  forming  a  central 
avenue,  and,  on  either  side,  one  hundred  and 
twenty-two  of  only  less  gigantic  dimensions  dis- 
tributed in  aisles  of  seven,  —  one  hundred  and 
thirty-four  columns  in  all.  Atoms  of  the  dust,  did 
you  rear  this  !  Matter  I  it  is  the  stuff  of  man's 
dreams  as  truly  as  of  God's  dreams,  and  mind  a 
power  compelling  its  brute  mass  as  the  winds  the 
clouds.  Orpheus  singing  into  place  the  stones  of 
the  sacred  city  with  the  music  of  his  lyre,  it  seems 
no  idle  fable. 

Crowning  marvel  of  all,  these  temples  were  never 
created  for  the  multitude.  They  were  but  the 
meeting-place  of  the  Pharaoh  god  with  the  god  of 
the  supernal  realm.  This  temple  of  Karnak,  from 
outermost  pylon  in  front  to  sanctuary  in  the  rear 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  length,  had  no  other 
significance  but  as  audience  chamber  of  consulta- 
tion between  the  Divine  Majesty  on  earth  and  the 
Divine  Majesty  in  heaven.  No  wonder  so  super- 
nal a  conception  demanded  so  supernal  an  embodi- 


310  EGYPT 

ment !  Yet  once  this  overwhelming  temple  stood  in 
direct  connection  by  a  broad  sphinx-lined  avenne 
of  more  than  a  mile  with  the  vast  Luxor  temple, 
while  equally  over  across  the  Nile,  past  the  colos- 
sal Memnon  statues,  and  on  and  on  to  the  temple 
of  Kurnah,  the  liamesseum,  and  Medinet  Habu, 
great  sphinx-lined  avenues  brought  it  into  like  con- 
nection with  these  stupendous  structures.  Now 
first  one  begins  to  feel  Thebes  in  its  day  of  glory. 
All  other  ruins  seem  the  ruins  of  little  children  at 
their  child-play  sport  of  building  sand  castles  on 
the  beach. 


PALESTINE 

It  is  from  Port  Said,  at  the  Mediterranean 
end  of  the  Suez  Canal,  that  one  embarks 
for  Palestine.  After  dreamy  weeks  spent  among 
the  mysterious  tombs  and  temples  of  the  Upper 
Nile,  the  contrast  is  startling  in  coming  out  upon 
this  congested  highway  of  the  traffic  of  the  mod- 
ern world.  It  is  the  Broadway,  the  Strand,  along 
which,  eastward-bound,  westward-boimd,  uninter- 
mittingly  stream  the  long  files  of  steamships.  What 
a  cut-off  of  a  whole  vast  continent  by  a  hundred 
miles  of  digging,  and  what  a  concentration,  as  for 
a  view  on  dress-parade,  of  the  commercial  fleets  of 
the  world ! 

As  a  witness,  however,  to  the  unity  of  creation 
and  to  the  fact  that  no  good  is  of  merely  private 
interpretation,  it  is  gratifying  to  record  how  from 
the  very  start  the  fishes  caught  hold  of  the  scope  of 
De  Lesseps'  idea,  leaping  at  the  thought  of  the 
new  epoch  inaugurated  by  his  enterprise  for  wider 
piscatory  as  well  as  human  intercourse ;  those  of  the 
Red  and  Arabian  seas  at  once  rejoicingly  plying 
tail  and  fin  for  closer  acquaintanceship  with  their 
Mediterranean  brothers,  and  those  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean for  wider  ethnological  relations  with  their 
congeners  of  the  Orient.  Who  of  enlarged  benev- 
olence but  must  rejoice  over  a  millennial  day  in 


312  PALESTINE 

which  the  languid  Red  Sea  mother-fish  can  now 
start  out  from  those  tepid  waters  with  her  small 
fry  languid  as  herself,  to  brace  their  constitutions 
with  the  tonic  coolness  of  more  invigorating  floods, 
while  countless  pulmonic  sisters  from  the  north, 
dreading  for  their  own  small  fry  a  like  inheritance, 
can  thus  secure  a  change,  as  beneficial,  to  the  tropic 
waters  of  the  south. 

On  the  voyage  from  Port  Said,  one  first 
touches  Palestinian  land  at  Jaffa.  It  has 
no  harbor,  and  as  a  heavy  sea  is  generally  running 
the  disembarkation  into  boats  is  more  lively  than 
agreeable.  One  jumps  headlong  from  the  ship's 
gangway  into  the  arms  of  the  boatmen,  and  reaches 
footing  by  faith  and  not  by  sight.  No  boatman, 
however,  "muffs,"  and  one  cannot  but  admire  the 
dexterity  with  which  they  catch  "on  the  fly  "  very 
stout  and  hysterically  shrieking  elderly  ladies. 

Spite,  however,  of  all  this  hurly-burly  the  well- 
regulated  mind  contrives  to  store  away  in  vivid 
memory  the  picturesque  promontory  on  which  the 
town  is  perched,  and  the  ragged  reef  off  its  south- 
ern end,  over  which  the  breakers  leap  in  sheets 
of  spray.  Such  mental  j^hotographs  are  of  lasting 
value.  Henceforth  when  one  reads  of  the  landing 
of  the  cedars  of  Lebanon  for  the  temple  of  Jeru- 
salem ;  of  Jonah  embarking  for  his  eventful  voy- 
age ;  of  Dorcas,  standing  reproof  to  most  of  us  in 
that  she  "  did  what  she  could ; "  of  St.  Peter's 
vision  of  the  sheet  let  down  filled  with  clean  and 
unclean  beasts  ;  of  stout  Judas  Maccabeus  assault- 


JAFFA    TO  JERUSALEM  313 

ing  the  town ;  of  the  Crusaders  again  and  again 
landing  there  from  the  Venetian  fleets  ;  and  finally 
of  Napoleon  raising  such  a  problem  in  humane 
casuistry  through  his  heroic  practice  in  poisoning 
the  sick  and  wounded  in  the  military  hospitals,  — 
all  will  have  in  it  an  element  of  reality  otherwise 
not  to  be  felt.  Yes,  even  Perseus  and  Andromeda, 
after  one  has  seen  the  very  rocks  to  which  the  sea- 
monster  bound  the  forlorn  maiden,  who  can  longer 
doubt  their  story?  Does  not  Pliny  attest  that 
even  in  his  day  the  chains  were  still  rusting  there  ! 
And  cannot  we  clinch  his  testimony  by  our  own 
attestation  that  the  rocks  are  not  yet  gone  ! 

When  Peter  the  Hermit  and  his  fellow-pil- 
grims went  up  to  Jerusalem,  it  was  under 
volleys  of  curses  and  a  hail  of  stones  that  tested 
the  metal  of  their  faith.  To-day  one  sneaks  up  by 
rail.  One  cannot  escape  a  haunting  sense  of  hu- 
miliation. Not  that  curses  and  stones  woidd  not 
be  plenty  enough  at  this  late  date  were  the  courage 
equal  to  the  will.  One  is  on  Mohammedan  soil 
and  under  the  flag  of  the  "  unspeakable  Turk," 
but  respect  for  the  Christian's  cannon  overpowers 
hate  of  the  Christian's  creed.  Fanaticism  can  only 
"  think  damn,"  not  act  it  out.  Back  in  Armenia, 
happily,  it  is  otherwise.  There  the  faithful  can 
slaughter  Christian  men,  women,  and  children,  even 
the  soldiers  lending  a  helping  hand,  and  the  gov- 
ernors diplomatically  denying  the  facts  when  Eu- 
rope begins  to  murmur.  But  here  into  the  train 
one  mounts  without  so  much  as  ground  for  a  ro- 


314  PALESTINE 

mantle  hope  that  a  sporadic  little  fanatic  of  an  Is- 
lamite boy  may  throw  a  stone  —  not  too  large  — 
through  the  window. 

Immediately  on  quitting  Jaffa,  the  train  plunges 
into  the  great  plain  of  Sharon,  fertile,  but,  after 
the  Nile  valley,  not  very  fertile ;  for,  under  the 
fiery  sun  of  Syria  and  with  no  brimming  river 
wherewith  to  slake  its  thirsty  lips,  its  broad  wheat- 
fields  and  fig,  orange,  and  mulberry  plantations 
have  no  dependence  but  on  the  "  earlier  and  later 
rains  "  of  spring.  They  had  already  fallen,  and  aU 
was  beautiful  as  one  now  looked  backward  over 
the  broad  level  of  green  relieved  against  the  en- 
croaching sea-sands,  the  snowy  breakers,  and  the 
sky-blue  expanse  of  the  Mediterranean.  Spots  in- 
timately associated  with  Scripture  story  were  now 
pointed  out  on  every  hand ;  but  the  only  one  that 
struck  home  with  any  vivid  sensation  was  the  val- 
ley of  Ajalon.  There,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon, as  we  looked  off  over  the  valley,  hung  the 
moon  directly  above  it.  Such  the  haze  of  the  at- 
mosphere that  the  entire  disk  was  distinctly  visi- 
ble. The  leap  to  the  lips  was  instantaneous  :  "  Sun 
stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou,  moon,  in 
the  valley  of  Ajalon !  " 

After  some  twenty  miles,  the  train  begins  to 
climb  the  monotonous,  barren  mountains.  Blunted, 
rarely  peaked  in  outline,  the  gray  limestone  rocks 
broken  into  narrow  lines  of  cleavage,  without  trees 
except  gnarled,  century-old  olives,  there  is  little  po- 
etic charm  in  such  scenery  unless  through  aerial 
effects  of  light  and  shadow.     One  startling  sen- 


JAFFA    TO  JERUSALEM  315 

sation,  however,  the  aspect  does  awaken.  Every- 
where are  the  shattered  rocks  so  sprinkled  with  red 
poppies  and  red  anemones,  or  relieved  against  col- 
lective masses  of  them,  as  to  suggest  the  idea  of 
flecks  and  pools  of  blood.  The  blood  besprinkled 
Mount  of  Sacrifice !  It  is  impossible  to  rid  the 
mind  of  the  impression. 

One  leaves  the  train  at  a  spot  that  could  not 
have  been  selected  better  by  mediaeval  pilgrim  or 
modern  artist  for  a  first  view  of  the  Holy  City. 
On  a  level  with  Jerusalem  itself  three  fourths  of 
a  mile  away,  a  deep  abyss  opening  up  between 
the  mountain  on  which  it  stands  and  the  moun- 
tain from  which  one  looks,  there  sits  the  sacred 
city,  its  walls,  its  thirty  towers,  its  wilderness  of 
domes,  and  dome-vaulted  dwellings.  How  seem- 
ingly impregnable  a  situation  for  security,  and  yet 
how  irresistible  an  appeal  to  every  heart  that  has 
ever  felt  the  aspiration  and  the  tragedy,  the  degra- 
dation and  the  glory  of  its  age-long  human  history ! 
Ah,  the  moans  of  despair,  the  yells  of  execration, 
the  anthems  of  triumph,  with  which  these  rocks 
have  echoed !  Spite  of  its  abrupt  and  isolated  po- 
sition, there  is  a  profound  sense  in  which  the  city 
cannot  "  sit  solitary."  It  is  compassed  about  by 
too  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses  ever  to  be  beheld 
apart  from  its  environment  in  imagination.  David 
is  storming  the  citadel  of  Mt.  Zion.  Solomon  is 
adorning  it  with  palace  and  temple.  Shishak,  king 
of  Egypt,  is  besieging  and  plundering  it.  Nebu- 
chadnezzar is  haling  away,  lamenting  sore,  its  sons 
and  daughters  to  captivity  in  Babylon.     Jeremiah 


316  PALESTINE 

is  plaining  its  woes,  and  Isaiah  prophesying  the 
coming  glory.  Ezra  is  restoring  it.  Jesus  is  weep- 
ing over  it.  Again  Titus  is  razing  it  to  the  ground. 
Constantine  is  re-adorning  it.  Khalif  Omar  is 
breaking  in  from  the  desert  to  rear  the  mosque  of 
Allah  on  the  site  of  the  temple  of  Jehovah.  Anon, 
the  ferocious  Turks  are  clutching  it  by  the  throat, 
and  the  Crusaders  are  wading  in  blood  to  their 
saddle-girths  through  its  courts,  and  Saladin  is 
once  again  planting  the  crescent  on  its  battlements, 
while  to-day  the  Greek,  Latin,  Armenian,  and  Cop- 
tic churches  of  Christendom  are  vindictively  fight- 
ino;  over  its  sacred  relics  as  the  Mohammedan  looks 
on  in  lofty  scorn,  and  the  Jewish  remnant,  a  nest  of 
paupers,  is  supported  by  the  pious  alms  of  French 
and  German  bankers. 

Our  quarters  in  Jerusalem  lay  just  outside  the 
Jaffa  Gate.  Never  to  my  dying  day  shall  I  cease 
to  be  thankful  for  a  quiet  stroll  of  a  couple  of 
hours  that  first  evening  around  a  portion  of  the 
city  walls.  The  fever  of  the  day  was  over,  and  the 
moon  poured  a  flood  of  softest  light  over  towers 
and  battlements  and  down  into  the  valley  of  Je- 
hoshaphat.  Without  and  within  all  was  a  dream 
of  peace.  The  spiritual  presence  of  Jesus,  the 
familiar  paths  his  footsteps  trod,  the  scenes  on 
which  his  eye  daily  rested,  —  all  were  blent  in 
one  harmonious  whole.  Over  yonder  in  distinct- 
est  outline  across  the  abyss  stood  the  Mount  of 
Olives,  and  low  down  to  the  right  the  Garden  of 
Gethsemane.  Where  in  any  religion  is  there  a 
symbol  remotely  to  be  compared  with  the  story  of 


SACRED  CITIES  317 

the  passionate  love,  the  mortal  agony,  the  resur- 
rection in  spiritual  triumph  of  the  life  of  Jesus  ! 
Buddhism  with  its  Nirvana  of  rest  for  him  who  in 
abandonment  of  despair  has  seen  into  the  depths 
of  the  emptiness  underljang  the  All,  Brahmanism 
with  its  thought-less,  desire-less,  imagination-less, 
reabsorption  into  the  Absolute,  what  are  they  be- 
side Jesus'  sublime  trust  in  life  eternal  in  the  bosom 
of  God  for  the  lowliest.  Ah,  that  after  that  hour 
dissolved  in  moonlight  peace  I  had  left  Jerusalem 
and  seen  no  more ! 

With  the  morrow  came  the  sense  of  disillu- 
sion. It  had  to  be  so.  Sacred  cities,  call 
them  Buddhist,  Mohammedan,  Christian,  call  them 
Benares,  Mecca,  Jerusalem,  are  one  in  essence. 
Deriving  their  repute  from  the  inspiration  of  some 
prophet  who  thought  to  reveal  higher  spiritual 
conceptions  to  the  world,  they  become  in  the  end 
the  gaping  pilgrimage-resorts  of  millions  of  the 
ignorant  and  superstitious.  Nor  is  this  the  worst. 
Whatever  one's  creed  as  to  the  spiritual  w^ortli  of 
the  "  merits  of  the  saints "  held  in  fee  by  any 
church  for  eking  out  the  demerits  of  the  sinful, 
no  doubt  of  their  financial  value  can  be  enter- 
tained. As  an  investment  in  real  estate,  secure 
for  a  thousand  years  from  fluctuation  on  the 
market,  the  tomb  of  a  prophet  eventually  rises  to 
a  higher  rate  per  foot  than  the  most  advantageous 
broker's  site  on  Wall  Street.  It  is  idle  to  try 
to  blink  these  ugly  facts.  "  Where  the  carcass 
is,  there  will  the  vultures  be  gathered  together." 


318  PALESTINE 

Whether  transacted  in  beef  and  pork,  or  in  crosses 
and  crescents,  business  is  business,  baptize  it  in 
whatever  sacrilegious  name  one  may. 

Tens  of  thousands  of  pilgrims  imply  no  end  of 
greedy  lodging-house  keepers,  imply  the  sharpest 
competition  in  driving  a  trade  in  candles,  rosaries, 
and  relics,  in  the  sale  of  farm  products  from  the 
country-people,  and  in  the  services  of  an  army  of 
rival  priests  and  Levites.  Thus,  inevitably,  the 
entire  material  prosperity  of  a  holy  city  is  as 
strictly  based  on  the  "  merits  of  the  saints "  as 
Newcastle  on  coals  or  Manchester  on  calicoes ;  and 
as,  in  a  great  commercial  city,  each  rival  firm  seeks 
to  outdo  its  neighbor  in  display  of  attractions  in 
its  show-windows,  so,  in  a  great  holy  city,  does 
each  competing  religious  body  vie  with  every  other 
in  the  superior  variety  and  marvel  of  its  tinsel 
legends,  authentic  relics,  and  miraculous  trumpery 
of  every  sort.  In  truth,  the  scourge  of  small  cords 
works  a  jail-delivery  only  once.  Soon  the  traders 
are  back  again,  this  time  to  realize  a  profit  out  of 
authentic  strands  of  the  very  cords  with  which  they 
were  originally  whipped. 

There  are  three  frames  of  mind,  each  equally 
natural,  in  which  a  human  being  may  wan- 
der round  among  the  holy  places  of  Jerusalem  and 
Bethlehem.  The  first  is  that  of  the  devout  village 
pilgrims  one  encounters  in  shoals,  largely  un- 
kempt, powerfully  built  Russian  peasants,  igno- 
rant and  superstitious  beyond  compare,  and  so 
hot-bloodedly  emotional   as  to  pass  in  a  moment 


IN  WHAT  FRAME  OF  MIND?  319 

from  the  most  groveling  prostration  before  a  relic 
to  the  most  savage  brutality  in  a  fight  with  a  Latin 
or  Coptic  fellow-Christian  of  erroneous  views.  The 
Second  is  that  of  the  thorough-going  disciple  of 
Mark  Twain,  without  the  genius  of  the  master; 
his  only  breviary  the  "  Innocents  Abroad."  He 
journeys  to  Jerusalem  in  devoutest  faith,  that  here 
is  sanctuary  none  other  can  rival  for  a  chance 
at  cheaj)  wit  based  on  irreverence,  and  that  once 
there  the  dullest  of  men  may  cherish  a  rational 
hope  of  manufacturing  a  really  funny  book  out  of 
incongruities  staring  him  in  the  face  on  every  hand. 
The  third  frame  of  mind  is  that  of  the  at  once 
medievally  devout  and  mediaevally  scholastic  man 
of  the  Cardinal  Newman  type,  one  who,  having 
eyes,  sees  only  through  a  haze  of  preconceptions, 
but  through  this  haze  sees  with  a  beauty  vastly 
edifying  to  all  who,  like  himself,  are  staggered  at 
nothing.  What,  then,  shall  the  visitor  do  w^ho  has 
neither  the  endowment  of  the  Russian  peasant,  nor 
of  a  pseudo-disciple  of  Mark  Twain,  nor  of  a  fol- 
lower of  Cardinal  Newman  ?  There  seems  but  one 
course  for  him. 

He  is  going,  say,  to  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre.  What  does  he  expect  to  find  there? 
The  shrine  of  pilgrimage  of  millions  of  the  human 
race  from  the  third  or  fourth  century  until  to-day. 
Does  he  supjjose  they  have  ever  read  Emerson 
or  Martineavi?  Or  is  it  his  object  to  try  con- 
clusions between  his  own  critical  apparatus  and 
their  purely  uncritical  imaginations?  The  Em- 
press Helena,  wife  of  Constantine,  with  imlimited 


320  PALESTINE 

means  and  a  most  obsequious  bishop  at  command, 
—  does  he  suppose  that,  when  she  went  out  to 
Palestine  to  settle  the  position  of  the  holy  places, 
she  meant  to  be  balked  by  idle  archaeological  con- 
siderations? As  an  adjunct  to  her  critical  appa- 
ratus, had  she  not,  for  example,  supernatural 
dreams  to  assure  her  just  where  under  Golgotha 
the  three  crosses  were  buried  ?  And,  when  a  mo- 
mentary doubt  arose  as  to  which  one  of  the  three 
was  the  cross  of  Jesus,  did  she  not,  by  sending  at 
once  to  the  hospital  for  a  moribund  patient,  fur- 
nish an  opportunity  to  the  true  cross  to  work 
a  miracle,  and  so  settle  the  question  beyond  ra- 
tional dispute? 

No :  there  is  but  one  way  and  one  spirit  in 
which  the  broadly  educated  man  of  to-day  can 
intelligently  and  seriously  view  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre  in  Jerusalem.  He  is  there  neither 
to  praise  nor  to  blame,  but  to  understand.  He  is 
in  the  presence  of  a  growth  of  centuries  differing 
totally  from  his  own.  The  whole  spectacle  is  to 
be  taken  as  a  unity,  one  and  indivisible.  The 
pillar  marking  the  exact  centre  of  the  earth,  as 
well  as  marking  the  spot  from  which  was  taken 
the  dust  out  of  which  Adam  was  made,  is  as  much 
a  part  of  the  whole  imaginative  creation  as  are 
the  three  authentic  holes  in  the  rock  into  which 
were  thrust  the  three  crosses  of  the  crucifixion. 
The  grave  of  Adam  exactly  underlying  the  cross 
of  the  Redeemer,  so  that  the  blood  of  the  eternal 
sacrifice  should  trickle  down  and  annul  the  origi- 
nal sin  of  him  in  whom  fell  the  whole  human  race, 


IN  WHAT  FRAME  OF  MIND?  321 

rests  on  precisely  the  same  foundation  of  authority 
as  the  spot  where  the  Virgin  Mother  stood  when 
Jesus  commended  her  to  the  tender  care  of  the 
beloved  disciple. 

On  setting  out,  therefore,  for  tlie  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre,  let  one  make  a  hard  and  fast  vow 
to  leave  all  cheap,  rationalistic  acumen  at  home. 
Rather,  let  him  watch  and  try  to  enter  into  the 
feelings  of  the  swarms  of  Russian  pilgrims.  See 
them  as  they  break  on  entering  under  the  high 
arch  of  the  portal,  and  wildly  precipitate  them- 
selves at  the  foot  of  the  "  Stone  of  Holy  Unction." 
It  is  like  seeing  troops  of  horses  just  out  of  the 
desert  break  and  precipitate  themselves  at  the 
sight  of  pools  of  water.  Here  is  the  Gate  of 
Heaven !  Here  is  the  Promised  Land  I  Here  can 
the  blessed  Saviour  be  seen,  felt,  handled,  kissed, 
reveled  in  through  every  sense  !  The  very  stone 
on  which  his  crucified  body  was  laid  for  the  anoint- 
ing, the  very  spot  on  which  Mary  stood  weeping^ 
the  very  hole  into  which  was  thrust  the  foot  of  the 
cross,  the  very  cave  and  sarcophagus  in  which 
rested  the  mangled  body  till  the  Angel  of  the 
Resurrection  rent  the  rock  asunder,  — oh,  to  be 
thrice  blessed  of  God  in  beholding  all  this,  to  be 
able  to  fling  the  arms  passionately  around  each  ob- 
ject, to  kiss  it  over  and  over,  to  rub  the  forehead 
against  it,  to  feel  in  outright  contact  with  what 
his  flesh  and  blood  had  been  in  contact  with,  — 
this  is  to  see  Christ,  to  become  one  with  Christ, 
to  find  him  tangible,  palpable  reality! 

Now  first  one  understands  the  true  spirit  of  the 


322  PALESTINE 

Crusades  as  he  watches  these  pilgrims,  men  and 
•women  who  had  tramped  their  hundred  or  thou- 
sand miles  to  behold  the  kingdom  of  heaven  radiant 
before  their  eyes  in  this  vast,  tawdry  church; 
understands,  too,  in  its  massive  material-spiritual 
significance,  the  great  Middle  Age  dogma  of  tran- 
substantiation,  of  bread  made  actual  flesh  of  Christ, 
and  wine  made  actual  blood  of  Christ,  till  the  be- 
liever ate  and  drank  the  real  body  and  blood  of  his 
Lord,  all  else  mere  spiritual  medium,  empty  and 
impalpable  in  comparison.  No  longer  ask,  then, 
what  you  think  of  all  this  marvelous  spectacle.  It 
matters  not.  Seek  only  to  get  at  what  these  pil- 
grims think  of  it,  what  it  actually  is  to  them,  what 
equally  it  has  been  to  millions  behind  them  and  to 
the  myriads  of  Crusaders  who  spilt  their  last  drop 
of  blood  in  rescuing  these  holy  memorials  from  the 
hand  of  the  infidel.  Then  opens  to  you,  child  of 
this  nineteenth  century,  a  new  chapter  in  human 
history.  What  made  this  past  so  vital,  so  terrible, 
so  glorious,  is  now  before  your  eyes. 

From  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  in 
Jerusalem  it  is  a  charming  stroll  of  five 
or  six  miles  to  Bethlehem  and  the  Church  of  the 
Nativity.  After  so  many  pilgrims  and  so  much 
strain  to  live  into  ages  that  have  gone  by,  it  is  very 
blissful  to  feel  one's  self  once  again  in  the  living 
presence  of  nature  and  out  under  the  old,  unchang- 
ing sky.  True,  it  is  a  barren  and  rugged  nature 
about  one.  The  very  wheat-fields  along  the  moun- 
tain crests  —  if  fields  they  may  be  called  —  are  so 


A   STROLL   TO  BETHLEHEM  323 

congested  with  sharply  splintered  stones  that  the 
partial  clearing  of  one  of  them  involves  burying 
up  a  full  half  of  the  surface  under  piles  of  rock 
taken  from  the  other  half.  Now  strikes  home 
new  insight  into  the  relation  between  man  and  his 
environment  as  one  takes  in  at  a  glance  why  the 
prophets  of  Jerusalem  so  commonly  met  death  by 
stoning.  Murder  in  the  heart  of  Saul,  and  St. 
Stephen  there,  the  magazine  of  death-dealing  mis- 
siles is  right  on  hand.  But  this  scene  of  cruel 
martyrdom,  even  though  it  bequeathed  to  the 
world  so  divine  a  prayer,  one  would  now  fain  dis- 
miss from  the  mind,  and  think  rather  of  the  sower 
who  went  forth  to  sow.  No  wonder  so  little  seed 
fell  upon  the  good  ground.  So  little  good  ground 
was  there.  But  the  stony  places,  they  were  every- 
where. All  seemed  like  looking  straight  through 
the  eyes  of  Jesus,  the  only  way  to  look  would  one 
ever  get  in  touch  with  his  soul. 

Ah !  what  a  walk  were  this  but  for  authentic 
sacred  places.  Every  few  hundred  paces,  and  lo ! 
another.  Now,  alas  I  one  must  pause  duly  to  re- 
vere the  slab  of  stone  on  which  sublime  Elijah 
sank  when  in  collapse  of  despair  he  cried,  "  Lord, 
it  is  enough ;  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  die." 
Nothing  more  full  of  the  heartbreak  of  a  mighty 
spirit  is  there  in  all  Hebrew  literature.  Does  it 
gain  by  one's  stopping  to  see,  in  physical  attesta- 
tion of  the  weight  of  the  prophet's  woe,  the  full- 
length  impress  of  his  body  sunk  as  with  a  mortal 
die  into  the  rock  ?  O  God !  cries  the  soul  in  re- 
volt, must  the  monkish  awkward  squad  thus  fire 


324  PALESTINE 

over  each  hallowed  grave.  From  every  side  rings 
their  ragged  fusillade.  Passing  belief  is  the  ab- 
ject prose  of  literalism  under  which  are  degraded 
the  most  spontaneous  outbursts  of  the  soul.  "  If 
they  should  hold  their  peace,  the  stones  would 
immediately  cry  out,"  Jesus  passionately  retorted 
to  the  Pharisees  incensed  with  the  multitude  pro- 
claiming, "  Blessed  the  King  that  cometh  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord ! "  Then  think  —  by  way  of 
edifying  comment  on  this  metaphor  of  passion  — 
of  being  shown  in  a  shrine  four  or  five  authentic 
specimens  of  the  very  stones  that  would  have  cried 
out,  only  that  the  multitude  did  not  hold  their 
peace,  and  so  there  was  no  call  for  lithological 
rebuke. 

The  impression  wrought  by  the  Church 
of  the  Nativity  is  over  again  that  of  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  in  Jerusalem. 
Once  more  is  experienced  the  same  dazed  surprise 
at  finding  so  many  sacred  places  included  within 
the  walls  of  a  single  great  building,  the  same  in- 
credulous wonder  that  each  incident  in  the  Gospel 
story  should  be  located  to  the  very  inch.  Here 
a  star  on  the  jjavement  marks  the  precise  spot  on 
which  the  Holy  Child  was  born  ;  here  another  star 
just  where  the  Magi  stood ;  here  still  another  the 
position  of  the  manger.  On  this  hand  a  chajiel 
shows  the  recess  to  which  St.  Joseph  retired  when 
he  gave  thanks  at  the  moment  of  the  Nativity  ;  on 
this,  where  the  angel  descended  to  command  the 
Flight  into  Egypt ;  on  this,  where  the  Innocents 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  NATIVITY       325 

were  gathered  together  and  buried  after  Herod's 
massacre.  Even  the  cave-stable,  if  here  it  is,  is  so 
bedizened  with  marble  and  tinsel  as  to  be  trans- 
formed into  a  tawdry  doll-house. 

A  single  inspired  picture  like  Correggio's  ecstatic 
"  Nativity  "  in  the  Dresden  Gallery,  a  single  glo- 
rifying poem  like  Milton's  "  Christmas  Hymn," 
and  the  soul  is  carried  a  thousand  times  nearer  in 
actual  time  and  space  to  the  spirit  that  dictated 
the  early  Gospel  narrative  of  cave,  manger,  shep- 
herds, happy  young  mother,  rejoicing  of  heaven 
with  earth,  than  by  all  this  Bethlehem  child's- 
play.  For  the  one  is  poetry  and  the  other  prose. 
Here,  alas !  is  the  whole  devout  story  monopolized 
for  vulgar  sensation,  and  degraded  to  a  sacred 
peep-show.  Indeed,  the  very  Turkish  soldiers  on 
guard  to  keep  the  Greek,  Latin,  and  Armenian 
monks  from  tearing  one  another's  hair,  should  the 
one  venture  to  cross  the  staked-out  "  claim  "  of  the 
other,  are  but  fitting  symbols  of  the  worth  of  the 
whole  ecclesiastical  exhibition.  Here,  of  a  truth, 
one  looks  on  at  the  real  Gethsemane,  the  real 
Agony  in  the  Garden,  the  crucifixion  afresh  of 
Jesus. 

"With  the  general  aspects  of  nature,  however, 
in  and  about  Bethlehem  and  Jerusalem,  and 
with  the  real  gain  in  becoming  familiar  with  them, 
the  case  is  utterly  different.  Here,  in  truth,  is  the 
handiwork  of  God,  —  the  material  body  in  which 
the  spirit  once  tabernacled,  on  which  time  has 
effected  little  change.     The  reputed  site,  say,  for 


326  PALESTINE 

example,  of  the  house  of  Martha  and  Mary  in 
Bethany  —  one  modern  stone  hovel  amid  a  hundred 
as  sordid  would,  one  might  think,  awaken  no  trace 
of  interest ;  but  the  view  of  earth  and  sky  on  which 
their  eyes  looked  out,  the  stony  hills,  the  terraces 
of  vines  and  olives,  the  fertile  spots  of  pasturage 
in  the  valley  below,  the  paths  trod  by  Jesus'  feet 
to  and  from  the  Mount  of  Olives  above,  —  these 
are  more  than  historical :  they  are  bound  up  with 
all  the  imagery  of  the  parables  and  intimately 
associated  with  the  one  real  home  that  was  refuge 
and  solace  to  him  who  so  often  had  not  "  where  to 
lay  his  head."  So  with  a  thousand  objects  in  this 
whole  region  of  spiritual  story.  One  looks  off  over 
the  barren  hills  among  which  David  was  a  wan- 
derer and  an  outcast.  The  guide  points  out  the 
site  of  the  cave  of  Adullam,  or,  perhaps,  the  exact 
spot  where  the  young  hero,  dying  of  thirst  for  a 
drink  from  the  dear  old  well  in  Bethlehem,  poured 
out  the  water  on  the  ground,  because,  thus  pur- 
chased, it  was  the  "  blood  of  his  men."  But  there 
are  countless  such  caves  in  the  limestone  of  these 
mountains  ;  and  what  matters  any  idle  fanc}'^  which 
exact  one  it  was  in  which  there  gathered  to  the 
outlawed  chief  "  every  one  that  was  in  distress, 
and  every  one  that  was  in  debt,  and  every  one  that 
was  discontented,  and  he  became  a  captain  over 
them."  Enough  that,  with  a  single  sweep  of  the 
eye,  one  thus  takes  in  the  scene  of  the  bandit  life, 
of  the  refuse  material  ripe  for  political  revolution, 
of  the  Sir  Philip  Sidney  chivalry  of  their  heroic 
leader.     A  realistic  setting   is  thus  given   to   the 


THE   SPIRIT  AND   THE  FLESH  327 

Bible  story  that  is  a   distinct  addition,  and   like 
instances  might  be  multiplied  without  end. 

Not,  indeed,  that  one  does  not  gladly  welcome 
legends  whenever  there  is  any  genuine  human 
nature  in  them.  In  Bethlehem,  to  give  an  example, 
one  visits  a  shrine  built  over  the  supposed  spot  to 
which  Mary  retired  with  the  infant  Jesus  to  prepare 
for  the  flight  into  Egypt.  There  one  drop  of  her 
mother  milk  fell  to  the  ground,  ever  after  impart- 
ing to  the  dust  of  the  place  miraculous  power  to 
make  the  milk  flow  freely  in  the  breasts  of  all 
mothers  unable  to  nourish  their  own  pining  little 
ones.  Crude  as  the  legend  is,  it  has  at  least  some- 
thing human  in  it,  something  in  line  with  the  loving 
tradition  of  the  Gospels.  For  Jesus,  once  a  babe, 
loved  all  babes,  and  knew  how  sweet  was  his  mother 
Mary's  milk.  One  can  sympathize  with  the  sad- 
eyed  peasant  woman  he  sees  kneeling  there,  her 
emaciated  baby  in  her  arms.  But  asked  to  share 
the  emotions  of  a  troop  of  pilgrims  hanging  in 
idiotic  simplicity  of  adoration  over  specimens  of 
the  stones  that  would  have  cried  out,  my  own  piety, 
I  confess,  fails. 

Of  course,  one  goes  to  see  and  hear  the 
wailing  of  the  Jews  over  the  sole  remain- 
ing fragment  of  the  foundation  wall  of  their 
national  temple,  —  probably  one  of  the  few  genuine 
relics  of  the  time  of  Solomon  left  in  the  city,  unless 
the  subterranean  quarries.  It  is  the  hilarious  cus- 
tom with  tourists  to  laugh  at  this  spectacle  as  a 
sort  of  mock  exhibition  of  grief  akin  to  shedding 


328  PALESTINE 

tears  over  Adam's  grave.  To  me  the  scene  was 
affecting.  Religion  and  patriotism  are  one  and 
inseparable  in  the  Jewish  mind ;  and  of  all  their 
former  glories  there  remains  to  them,  in  their  own 
ancestral  city,  but  this  stretch  of  ruined  wall.  If 
ever  there  was  a  "  lost  cause,"  the  memory  of  which 
might  remain  locked  up  in  the  human  heart  genera- 
tion on  generation,  surely  this  is  one.  Exiles  in 
their  own  home  ;  dominated  by  a  hateful  Moham- 
medan government ;  their  temple  site  the  seat, 
on  which  they  dare  not  set  foot,  of  the  splendid 
Mosque  of  Omar;  prohibited,  at  the  risk  of  being 
torn  to  pieces  by  ferocious  mobs,  from  so  much  as 
walking  through  the  street  of  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre,  —  a  real  Via  Dolorosa  to  them  ; 
with  no  future,  but  only  a  past,  to  fall  back  on  for 
cheer  and  hope,  —  why  should  there  not  be  pathetic 
sincerity  in  the  litany  they  chant? 

"  Because  of  the  palace  which  is  deserted, 
We  sit  alone  and  weep. 
Because  of  the  tenaple  which  is  destroyed, 
Because  of  the  walls  which  are  broken  down. 
Because  of  our  greatness  which  is  departed, 
Because  of  the  precious  stones  of  the  temple  ground  to  powder, 
Because  of  our  priests  who  have  erred  and  gone  astray. 
Because  of  our  kings  who  have  contemned  God,  — 
We  sit  alone  and  weep." 

In  Jerusalem,  its  population  three  fourths  Jewish 
and  Mohammedan,  its  Christian  temples  maintained 
in  safety  solely  through  fear  of  European  interven- 
tion, one  feels  as  nowhere  else  the  abiding  spir- 
itual characteristics  of  the  Semitic  race,  and  the 
greatness   of   the   gulf  that   divides   it   from   the 


THE  DEAD  SEA  AND   THE  JORDAN     329 

Aryan,  —  the  outcome  of  whose  distinct  pantheistic 
and  philosophical  genius,  superimposed  on  the 
simple  story  o£  the  Gospel,  is  seen  in  the  vast 
system  of  theological  mythology  here  so  crudely 
represented  by  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches. 
The  Mosque  of  Omar  and  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  the  naked  simplicity  of  the  ritual  of  the 
one,  the  florid  and  grotesque  symbolism  of  the 
other,  —  here  are  the  two  great  races  in  salient 
contrast. 

To  us,  in  the  saddle  most  of  the  time  and 
under  a  blazing  Syrian  sun,  great  certainly 
was  the  fatigue,  though  greater  far  the  interest,  of 
the  descent  of  nearly  four  thousand  feet  to  Jericho, 
the  Dead  Sea,  and  the  Jordan.  That  it  is  still  pos- 
sible on  this  memorable  journey  to  "fall  among 
thieves"  —  though  the  good  Samaritan  be  more 
problematical  —  was  evident  in  the  fact  that  our 
little  party  of  two  tourists,  a  dragoman,  and  a  ser- 
vant, required  the  escort  of  a  donkey-mounted  scrap 
of  a  Bedouin,  a  highly  decorated  gun,  six  feet  in 
length,  strapped  horizontally  across  his  back.  Once 
covenanting  with  this  tawny  son  of  Ishmael  for  a 
certain  sum  in  shekels,  metaphorically  we  were 
taken  to  have  "  eaten  his  salt,"  and  so,  under  the 
protecting  aegis  of  the  laws  of  hospitality,  to  be 
exempt  from  further  robbery  at  the  hands  of  his 
tribe.  As  he  would  sway  from  side  to  side,  the 
muzzle  of  his  weapon  described  such  areas  of 
ninety  or  more  degrees,  that  we  who  rode  behind 
felt  in  him  a  veritable  object  of  terror,  and  so 
possessed  our  souls  in  peace. 


330  PALESTINE 

It  was  good  to  be  out  among  the  mountains, 
stern  and  forbidding  as  they  looked,  and  to  be 
storing  away  first-hand  mental  pictures.  Every 
now  and  then  we  would  come  upon  a  gaunt,  sun- 
blackened  shepherd  walking  in  front  of  his  flock, 
the  sheep  "  following  him."  "  The  Lord  is  my 
shepherd,  I  shall  not  want."  Ay,  but  without  a 
shepherd  knowing  where  lies  every  nibble  of  grass 
and  every  trickling  water-spring,  how  these  thirsty, 
pining  creatures  must  want.  "  Read  with  empha- 
sis !  "  insisted  in  the  school  our  early  teachers. 
That  one  word  want^  —  ah  !  with  what  emphasis 
did  famine  and  thirst  ejaculate  it  here.  Yes,  how 
deep-lying  in  sharp  sensation  is  all  poetic  imagery! 
and  how  eternally  true  of  facts,  "  They  learn  in  suf- 
fering what  they  teach  in  song." 

Then,  farther  on,  we  would  come  upon  the  ruins 
of  an  old  Crusader  castle,  bleached,  bare,  and  with 
no  green  ivy  to  mantle  its  wounds  and  scars.  Oh, 
the  cruel  disillusioning  that  must  have  come  over 
those  fanatic  warriors,  their  brains  aflame  with 
visions  of  the  Promised  Land,  when,  once  they 
had  stormed  the  sacred  city  and  sated  their  lust 
of  blood,  they  found  themselves  monotonously  set 
down  on  these  desolate  mountains,  amidst  swarms 
more  fanatic  than  themselves,  to  hold  fast  this  Fata 
Morgana  exhalation  of  desert  sand.  With  what 
yearning  must  Europe  have  risen  before  the  mind's 
eye,  the  castle  on  the  Loire,  the  castle  on  the  Rhine ! 

More  impressive  still,  stand  and  gaze  down  into 
the  savage  gorge  at  the  bottom  of  which  courses 
the  brook  Cherith.     For  a   picture  of   raven-fed 


THE  DEAD  SEA  AND   THE  JORDAN     331 

Elijah,  what  a  background  of  solitary  desolation ! 
Yes,  God  pity  the  prophet  there  whom  the  ravens 
should  not  find  out  and  succor !  And  yet  to  the 
side  of  the  gorge,  like  a  limpet  to  a  rock,  clings 
a  monastery,  where  centuries  on  centuries  succes- 
sive bands  of  Carmelite  monks  have  dwelt.  Piteous 
the  irony  of  the  fate  of  the  poor  Crusaders ;  but, 
irony  of  ironies  would  you  ponder  and  fathom  it, 
is  it  not  witnessed  in  brotherhoods  of  ascetic  monks, 
self-exiled  in  this  savage  gorge  to  commune  with 
the  mighty  spirit  of  Elijah,  and  yet  doomed  to 
seek  their  ravens  in  the  profits  of  carving  salad- 
spoons  for  gadding  tourists  out  of  holy  wood  from 
the  Mount  of  Olives  ? 

Striking  views  begin  to  open  up  over  a  wide 
expanse  as  one  nears  the  verge  of  the  mountain 
region.  What  a  presence  of  ages  of  history  and  of 
historical  legend !  In  sight  is  the  top  of  Pisgah 
lifting  from  behind  the  mountains  of  Moab ;  in 
sight,  the  river  that  rolled  back  for  the  passage  of 
Joshua's  bands ;  in  sight,  the  mound-heaps  of  old 
Jericho,  toppled  down  at  the  blast  of  the  rams' 
horns  of  the  priests.  These,  and  the  Mount  of 
Temptation  to  which  the  Devil  carried  Jesus,  the 
grave  of  Moses  set  up  in  rivalry  by  the  Moham- 
medans, the  pool  of  bitter  water  Elisha  made  sweet 
ever  after  by  casting  in  a  handful  of  salt,  the  whole 
stretch  of  the  Jordan  valley,  and,  shining  in  the 
distance,  the  glassy  surface  of  the  Dead  Sea ! 

Unquestionably,  over  these  Moab  mountains  de- 
scended Joshua  and  his  desert-toughened,  desert- 
famished  Bedouins.     What  the  cry  "  The  sea!  the 


332  PALESTINE 

sea !  "  of  Xenophon's  army,  to  their  cry  as  their 
eyes  feasted  on  the  verdure  of  the  Jordan  valley  as 
then  it  was ! 

Fresh  from  reading  the  Book  of  Joshua,  fresh 
from  the  primitive  chroniclers  of  the  first  Moham- 
medan campaigns,  how  realistically  one  saw  and 
felt  that  it  was  one  and  the  same  historic  story 
repeated  at  vast  intervals  of  time.  The  same  fiery 
and  vindictive  tribal  God  of  the  desert,  —  the  su- 
pernatural Bedouin,  with  a  few  genuine  tribal 
Bedouin  virtues  in  his  heart,  ever  ready  to  reward 
the  faithful  with  the  illimitable  booty  of  idola- 
trous cities  and  idolatrous  women,  —  such  alike  the 
Jahveh  of  Joshua  and  the  Allah  of  Mohammed ! 
One  pays  afresh  his  tribute  of  grateful  reverence 
to  devoutly  brave  old  Christian  Bishop  Ulfilas,  in 
that  clear  back  in  the  fourth  century  he  should  have 
refused  so  stoutly  to  translate  for  his  converted 
Goths  the  Book  of  Joshua.  No,  the  Goths  need 
no  revelation  from  on  high  to  incite  to  rapine  and 
murder;  enough  of  it  have  they  by  nature  with- 
out the  aid  of  grace !  Such  the  ringing  word  of  the 
stout  old  bishop.  Yet  out  of  these  ferocious  begin- 
nings were  to  grow,  at  last,  as  consummate  spiritual 
flower,  the  sublime  strains  of  Isaiah  and  the  par- 
able of  the  Prodigal  Son. 

In  contradiction  of  its  name,  foi'ever  will  the 
Dead  Sea  hold  in  one  mind,  at  least,  a  green  and 
living  memory.  Not  that  its  environing  mountains 
are  not  desolate  enough,  but  what  sternness  will 
not  aerial  light  robe  in  a  bi-idal  veil  of  beauty ! 
The  air  was  breathless,  and  perfect  the  reflection 


THE  DEAD  SEA   AND   THE  JORDAN     333 

of  sky  and  range.  Sodom  and  Gomorrali,  Lot  and 
his  wicked  daughters,  fire  and  brimstone  from  on 
high,  seemed  all  out  of  keeping  with  the  radiant 
sunshine.  For  months  nowhere  had  my  friend 
and  I  found  ourselves  where  it  was  possible  to 
enjoy  the  luxury  of  a  swim,  and  now  red-hot  with 
long  hours  in  the  saddle  under  such  a  blazing  sun, 
rank  ingratitude  had  it  seemed  not  to  answer  the 
invitation  of  these  crystal-clear  waters. 

Often  as  has  been  described  the  deliglit  of  float- 
ing on  the  buoyant  surface  of  the  Dead  Sea,  the 
experience  is  one  only  to  be  interpreted  in  terms 
of  private  consciousness.  Under  the  spell  of  such 
sparkling  levity,  presto !  vanishes  the  heavy  and 
the  weary  weight  of  gravitation,  in  contemptuous 
refutation  of  every  law  of  Newton.  The  elastic 
flood  tosses  one  up  in  its  arms  as  a  proud  and 
happy  mother  her  crowing  babe.  Dainty  Ariel, 
thistledown  floating  in  the  sunbeams,  all  other 
airy-fairy  creatures,  you  are  one  with  them  in 
spirit  now.  The  more  you  weigh,  the  less  you 
weigh.     Here  is  the  real  hydrostatic  paradox  ! 

From  the  shore  of  the  Dead  Sea  to  the  ford  of 
the  Jordan,  the  traditional  spot  of  the  baptism  of 
Jesus,  the  ride  lies  through  an  arid  region  whose 
chief  foliage  is  a  scrub  growth  of  S2nna  Chi'isti, 
the  accredited  plant  of  the  crown  of  thorns.  Only 
a  narrow  fringe  of  trees  separates  the  stream  from 
the  alkali-eaten  stretches  on  either  side.  Disap- 
pointing was  the  sight  of  the  river  as,  swollen  by 
the  melting  snows  of  Hermon  far  to  the  north,  the 
swift  and  turbid  current  rolled  and  eddied  along. 


334  PALESTINE 

There,  too,  alas  !  was  the  noise  and  inane  laughter 
of  a  swarm  of  lunching  tourists.  Ah !  why  are 
all  tourists  of  another  party  so  sacrilegiously  com- 
monplace? Temporarily  one  forgets  good  Bishop 
Ulfilas,  and  breathes  a  sigh  that  Joshua  might  de- 
scend once  more  from  these  Moab  mountains  to 
smite  hip  and  thigh  such  Canaanitish  idolaters. 
There  is  but  one  thing  for  it,  to  steal  away  to 
some  quiet  spot  farther  up  or  down  the  river  and 
there  to  try  to  think  one's  own  thought.  "  Thou, 
when  thou  pray  est,  enter  thy  closet  and  shut  the 
door."  How  often  in  the  Holy  Land  recur  these 
words.  Either  find  such  inner  sanctuary  in  the 
soul  itself,  or  better  be  anywhere  than  in  Palestine. 
And  yet  and  yet !  Every  hour  is  the  mind  storing 
away  imagery  that  in  later  days,  when  the  dust 
has  settled  and  the  fever  has  cooled,  will  make 
a  thousand  incidents  in  the  Gospel  stoiy  so  very, 
very  real.     And  yet  and  yet ! 

"  0  heart !  weak  follower  of  the  weak, 
That  thou  should 'st  compass  land  and  sea 
In  this  far  place  that  God  to  seek, 
Who  long  ago  had  come  to  thee." 


BAALBEC   AND   DAMASCUS 

As  on  a  sunny  morning  one  steams  into  the 
harbor  of  Beyrout,  in  northern  Syria,  how 
entrancing  a  picture !  The  Lebanon  ranges  are 
full  in  view,  their  higher  peaks  white  with  snow ; 
while,  embowered  in  plantations  of  fig,  olive,  mul- 
berry, and  orange  trees,  the  white  houses  of  the 
city  peep  through  on  the  hillside.  Along  the 
sands  below  curve  the  fleecy  wave-line  and  bright 
blue  waters  of  the  Mediterranean.  For  a  week  to 
come,  we  are  to  be  driving  over  these  mountains 
and  down  among  the  oasis  valleys  of  Baalbec  and 
Damascus. 

Rather  in  Kansas  or  Montana  than  in  Syria 
one  would  look  for  startling  impressions  of  the 
march  of  modern  improvement.  It  is  a  mistake. 
Go  instead  to  Syria  for  a  real  sensation.  The 
road  on  which  one  drives  to-day  equals  any  over 
the  passes  of  Switzerland.  What  does  this  mean 
in  the  land  of  the  "  unspeakable  Turk,"  under  the 
blight  of  whose  ride  all  mildews  and  goes  to  ruin  ? 
Only  the  iron  hand  of  Europe  laid  in  arrest  on  the 
shoulder  of  Asia,  with  its  stern  word,  "  So  far  and 
no  farther !  "  The  road,  the  work  of  French  cap- 
ital, is  safeguarded  against  Moslem  cupidity  and 
kept  in  working  order  by  French  energy  and 
science  marshaling  the  labor  of  the  native  popu- 


336  BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

lation,  and  finding  no  more  faithful  labor  any- 
where, if  fairly  treated.  Close  beside  this  triumph 
of  modern  engineering  runs  the  old  trail  from 
Damascus,  torn  and  gullied  almost  out  of  recogni- 
tion, over  which  are  painfully  laboring  great  cara- 
vans of  heavily  burdened  asses  and  camels,  the  poor 
brutes  picking  their  way  and  bruising  their  knees 
after  the  good  old  ancestral  fashion.  Further 
still,  already  is  a  mountain  railway  from  Beyrout 
to  Damascus  in  rapid  advance  before  the  eye,  and 
soon  will  be  witnessed  side  by  side  the  bewildering 
medley  of  locomotives  and  trains  shrieking  their 
fiery  way  along,  of  carriages  and  pack-wagons 
rolling  smoothly  over  a  macadamized  road,  and 
of  long  trains  of  camels,  in  alternate  pathos  of 
patience  and  snarls  of  sullen  wrath,  floundering 
their  way  among  the  rocks  of  the  dilapidated  old 
trail.  For  thousands  of  years,  from  Damascus, 
Palmyra,  Aleppo,  Bagdad,  Jerusalem,  Mecca,  have 
these  vast  caravans  conveyed  the  trade  between 
India,  Persia,  Arabia,  Syria,  and  the  European 
world.  But  lo !  before  the  sight  a  new  epoch  in 
history-building. 

In  the  modern  crusade  of  Europe  against  Asia, 
Peter  the  Hermit  has  become  a  railway  engineer, 
no  longer  with  the  ragged  rabble  behind  him  he 
first  led  out,  but  the  science,  literature,  polities, 
law,  moral  and  religious  ideas  of  a  higher  civiliza- 
tion. No  farther  back  than  1860  had  there  been 
a  hideoiis  massacre  of  the  Christian  population  of 
Damascus  at  the  hand  of  Moslem  fanaticism.  This 
led  to  French  interveiition,  and  thus  did  the  blood 


BEYROUT  AND  THE  LEBANON  RANGES    337 

of  the   martyrs  become  tlie  seed  of   tlie  railway 
church. 

In  long  circuitous  curves  to  the  top  of  the  pass, 
at  an  altitude  of  over  five  thousand  feet,  the  road 
winds  its  way,  skirting  mountain  precipices  and 
slopes  treeless  except  for  olives,  but  terraced  up 
in  dizziest  heights  for  patches  of  wheat  and  vines. 
Where  the  grapes  get  the  wit  and  patience  to  elab- 
orate such  rich  juices  out  of  so  desiccated  a  soil  is 
a  moral  lesson  to  all  whose  own  mental  soil  belongs 
to  a  like  arid  geological  formation.  It  fairly 
makes  one  tremble  to  think  how  inexorably  he 
will  be  judged  if,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  he  does  not 
contrive  to  grow  and  ferment  bumpers  of  spiritual 
champagne. 

Once  at  the  top  of  the  pass,  however,  the  most 
poetic  conception  of  the  Pisgah  outlook  that  has 
ever  ravished  the  soul  is  faint  before  reality. 
Three  thousand  feet  below,  nestled  down  between 
the  Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon  ranges,  stretches 
a  level  vallej^  that  shines  like  a  lake  of  emerald. 
It  is  six  or  eight  miles  broad  and  thirty  long,  and 
the  eye,  turning  to  it  from  the  sun-smitten  moun- 
tains, fairly  pastures  on  such  greenness.  Pre- 
existent  states  of  soul  emerge  from  long-forgotten 
seons  of  time  when  one  was  driven  down  with  his 
fellow -kine  from  these  arid  heights  to  wander 
knee-deep  in  such  lush  exuberance,  bruise  out  its 
streaming  juices,  and,  fully  sated,  at  length  to  lie 
down  and  rimiinate  in  pastoral  Nirvana.  Yet, 
along  with  this  elemental  sense,  the  root  in  us  of 
all  higher  sense,  is  blent  the  richer  content  of  our 


338  BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

clear  human  nature.  While  we  still  pasture  below, 
we  yet  lift  up  our  eyes  on  high.  For  yonder,  over 
there,  tower  the  snow-crowned  ranges  of  Mt.  Her- 
mon,  leading  the  mind  on  into  Galilee. 

For  a  book  to  set  a  boy's  mind  on  fire  and 
awaken  yearnings  that  some  day  will  fulfill 
themselves  in  actual  sight,  commend  me  to  William 
Ware's  "Zenobia"  and  the  visions  it  conjures  up 
of  Palmyra,  —  a  dream  of  Greek  architectural 
beauty  set  in  a  luxurious  oasis  and  surrounded  by 
thirsty  desert.  Bedouins  and  camels  thrown  in  ad 
libitum  to  the  top  of  a  boy's  enchanted  imagina- 
tion. Alas !  we  had  not  time  to  spare  for  Palmyra, 
but  Baalbec  is  an  example  of  the  same  type  of 
city,  and  to  Baalbec  were  we  bound.  The  broad 
luxuriant  valley  but  now  described,  and  along 
which  we  were  the  next  day  driving,  had  been  the 
feeder  of  its  population,  the  great  caravans  had 
been  the  fleets  that  piled  up  its  former  wealth. 
A  Graeco-Roman  city  in  Syria,  —  one  of  the  host 
that  once  beautified  this  now  for  centuries  devas- 
tated land,  —  a  city,  the  foundation-walls  of  its 
Acropolis  laid  in  gigantic  blocks  by  old  Assy- 
rian Baal  worshipers,  then  crowned  with  sumptu- 
ous Greek  sun-temples  by  Roman  emperors,  then 
further  surmounted  with  Mohammedan  towers  and 
forts,  the  ruins  of  all  this  were  we  to  see,  ruins 
to-day  standing  in  loneliness  of  desolation,  the 
city's  former  wealth,  population,  almost  its  very 
name,  for  ages  gone. 

Briskly  rub  Aladdin's  lamp  and  the  genie  ap- 


DAMASCUS  339 

pears  in  a  night  to  rear  a  stately  city  with  its 
palaces  and  gardens.  All  through  the  East  one 
learns  to  feel  this  imagery.  The  genii  are  water, 
labor  at  unlimited  command  and  at  infinitesimal 
price,  caravans  focusing  in  a  given  spot  converging 
streams  of  wealth.  Here  are  the  magic  powers  by 
which  the  city  rises  like  an  exhalation,  or,  cut  off 
from  which,  it  sinks  back  into  solitary  ruin.  Such 
a  ruin  is  Baalbec  to-day,  a  squalid,  straggling  vil- 
lage fringing  an  acropolis  crowned  by  great  tem- 
ples and  palaces  that  tell  of  by-gone  glory. 

That  day,  the  first  time  for  months,  we  were 
troubled  by  rain.  What  boy,  however,  brought 
up  in  childhood  on  William  Ware  but  rises  to 
the  occasion  !  If  the  actual  sun  does  not  shine, 
he  creates  one  and  pours  out  its  beams  in  golden 
glory  over  the  superb  colonnades.  The  fallen  col- 
umns he  sets  up  on  end  beside  their  still  stand- 
ing mates.  The  aqueducts  he  reconstructs  and 
brims  with  creative  water  ;  the  naked  hillsides  he 
clothes  with  palaces  and  irrigated  gardens ;  the 
long  gone  commercial  wealth  he  brings  in  again  to 
the  crowded  bazaars  on  the  backs  of  the  gaunt 
camels.  Out  of  the  ruins  rises  before  his  mind's 
eye  the  once  splendid  and  luxurious  city,  and  into 
them  he  sees  it  sink  again,  ah,  with  what  refrain 
of  time  and  mortality  sighing  through  his  soul ! 

To  reach  Damascus  one  crosses  the  Anti- 
Lebanon  range,  setting  out  for  an  eight  or 
nine  hours'  drive  from  Sthora.     Ever  more  forbid- 
ding grow  the  scorched  mountain  defiles,  till  sud- 


340  BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

denly  at  their  feet,  a  river  from  its  birth,  leaps  out 
at  a  bound  the  Abana.  The  magic  wand  is  found. 
"  Give  me  water  and  a  desert  and  I  will  create  a 
paradise  I"  lo !  the  Oriental  version  of  Archimedes. 

Truly  with  two  forms  of  nature-worship,  lifted 
to  devoutest  and  most  grateful  faith,  the  heart 
lovingly  sympathizes,  —  the  worship  of  the  sun 
and  the  worship  of  water.  "  Are  not  Abana  and 
Pharphar,  rivers  of  Damascus,  better  than  all  the 
waters  of  Israel?"  Yes,  O  Naaman,  the  Syrian, 
recreant  wert  thou  to  the  manifest  divinities  of  thy 
Damascus  not  thus  to  sound  their  praise  ! 

Now  at  once  springs  forth  a  new  creation. 
Reeds  and  grass  grow  lush,  flowers  bloom  scarlet 
and  gold,  almond-trees  fling  out  a  wealth  of  white 
blossoms,  houses  and  embowering  gardens  line  the 
banks.  In  this  magnificent  water-supply,  dispersed 
over  the  immense  plain  through  a  thousand  chan- 
nels and  leaping  up  into  fountains  in  every  court- 
yard, one  now  reads  the  perennial  story  of  Damas- 
cus :  "  While  other  cities  of  the  East  have  risen 
and  decayed,  it  is  still  what  it  was.  It  was  founded 
long  centuries  before  Baalbec  and  Palmyra,  and  it 
has  outlived  them  both.  While  Babylon  is  a  heap 
in  the  desert,  and  Tyre  a  ruin  on  the  shore,  it  re- 
mains what  it  was  called  in  the  prophecies  of  Isaiali, 
'  the  head  of  Syria.'  " 

Yet  here,  as  in  every  region  of  Syria,  the  blight 
of  Mohammedanism  and  the  slime  of  the  Turk  is 
over  all.  Every  element  of  the  sensuous  paradise 
is  at  hand,  —  pools  of  water,  the  constant  murmur 
of  rivulets,  gardens  of  pomegranates,  figs,  plums, 


DAMASCUS  341 

apricots,  marble-lined  courts,  shady  and  perfumed 
with  fruit-laden  orange-trees  and  cool  with  the 
spray  of  jetting  fountains.  Still,  all  wears  a  look 
of  neglect  and  decay,  of  suspicion  and  fear.  In 
the  vast  bazaars,  shut  in  from  the  sun  by  over- 
head nettings,  is  displayed  a  bewildering  variety  of 
Oriental  manufactures,  —  silks,  weapons,  saddles, 
embroideries,  —  and  through  them  streams  the 
strangest  medley  of  tribes  and  garbs.  But  a  scent 
of  fanaticism,  lust,  and  bloodthirstiness  is  on  the 
very  air.  Uncaged  tigers  would  not  quicker  leap 
to  carnage  than,  dared  they,  would  these  tigers  of 
Allah. 

Visit  such  of  the  dwellings  of  the  wealthy  as 
strangers  are  admitted  to,  and  what  a  story  they 
tell  of  lack  of  any  trace  of  the  sanctity  of  the 
home,  of  any  interest  in  thought ;  what  a  story 
of  the  mere  sensuous  existence  of  the  bath,  the 
harem,  the  siesta,  coffee,  and  the  pipe.  On  the  out- 
side these  houses  are  blank  walls,  or,  where  they 
have  windows,  they  are  shut  in  with  jealous  screens 
of  delicate  openwork  carving.  But  once  within 
the  courtyards,  paved  and  on  all  sides  faced  with 
richly  colored  marbles,  murmuring  with  the  sound 
of  water,  and  set  with  orange  and  myrtle,  momen- 
tarily one  feels  the  spell  of  the  siren  incantation. 
All  this  on  earth,  and  paradise  thi'own  in !  Gra- 
cious is  Allah  to  the  faithful  I  Who  would  not 
renounce  forever  study,  literature,  society,  art,  phi- 
losophy, reform,  to  dream  away  life  in  such  nar- 
cotic repose? 

To  such  enticing  questionings  as  these  were  we 


342  BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

men  left  in  the  courtyards,  and  to  the  improving 
society  of  the  coal-black  eunuchs,  brutes  unskill- 
fuUy  carved  in  ebony,  and  ready  at  a  sign  to  basti- 
nado or  bowstring  the  fairest  of  recalcitrant  wives. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  ladies  with  us  were  admitted 
into  the  inner  sanctuary  of  the  harem. 

The  only  peoples,  says  SchoiJenhauer,  who  have 
ever  understood  woman  are  the  peoples  of  the 
East.  They  lock  her  up,  as  unfit  to  go  abroad. 
Less  grounded  in  philosophy,  the  ladies  of  our 
party  returned  not  duly  impressed  with  the  privi- 
lege of  lounging  all  day  on  divans,  eating  sweet- 
meats, and  smoking  pipes,  but  rather  with  a  look 
in  their  eyes  that  seemed  to  presage  a  swift  return 
to  America  to  preach  a  new  crusade  for  the  deliv- 
ery of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  of  their  outraged  sister- 
hood from  the  defiling  hand  of  the  infidel.  In 
vain  we  superiorly  introduced  them  to  the  eunuchs 
as  the  natural  custodians  of  their  unstable  sex. 
Ideals  vary  so !  The  most  beatified  conception 
of  the  guardian  angel  of  womanhood  to  which  the 
Mohammedan  mind  can  rise  assumes  the  guise  of 
the  brute-jawed,  coal-black  eunuch. 

Many  the  books  on  comparative  religion  we 
read  to-day,  but  an  hour  with  one's  own  eyes  is 
worth  them  all.  Mohammedanism  is  the  only 
great  world-religion  that  originated  with  a  semi- 
barbarian,  with  a  prophet  who  could  neither  read 
nor  write,  a  man  of  no  knowledge  outside  the  man- 
ners and  traditions  of  a  narrow  desert  tribe,  a  man 
of  such  enormous  sensual  passion  and  bloodthirsty 
ferocity  as  to  be  capable  of  slaughtering  a  husband 


DAMASCUS  343 

in  the  morning  and  forcing  his  wife  to  marriage 
the  same  night.  From  such  a  mind  and  character, 
a  flame  of  native  eloquence,  impassioned  in  inten- 
sity of  adoration  of  a  deity  who  was  a  consuming 
fire  against  idolatry,  a  model,  too,  of  equity,  sim- 
plicity, and  kindliness  after  the  code  of  morals  of  a 
semi-nomad  clan,  —  from  such  a  prophet  Islam  de- 
rived its  enduring  ideal  of  the  man  after  Allah's 
own  heart,  the  infallible  declarer  of  Allah's  will,  the 
exceptional  favorite  on  whom  Allah  lavished,  by 
special  revelation  of  what  he  esteemed  the  choicest 
blessing  at  his  command,  a  far  larger  multiplicity 
of  wives  than  was  accorded  unto  others.  Into  the 
minds  and  passions  of  millions  Mohammed  burned 
his  own  personal  characteristics,  and  his  followers 
have  always  borne  his  impress. 

Utterly  different  was  it  with  the  ideal  of  the  other 
great  world-religions,  the  ideal  of  the  Confucianist, 
of  the  Buddhist,  of  the  Brahman,  of  the  Zoroas- 
trian,  of  the  Christian.  Confucius  was  a  culti- 
vated, reflective,  benevolent  sage ;  the  Buddha 
was  all  tenderness  and  compassion  ;  Zoroaster  was 
a  mind  profoundly  impressed  with  the  stupendous 
conflict  of  Good  with  Evil ;  the  thinkers  of  Brah- 
manism  were  deep  speculative  philosophers,  re- 
cluses from  the  world  of  strife  and  passion  ;  the 
central  thought  of  Jesus  was,  "  He  that  loveth 
dwelleth  in  God  and  God  in  him." 

It  is  altogether  idle  to  dream  that  such  utterly 
contrasted  ideals  leave  no  mark  on  the  peoples 
that  embrace  them.  The  moderation  and  equity 
of  Confucius,  the  Buddha's  tenderness  of  compas- 


344  BAALBEC  AND  DAMASCUS 

sion,  the  piety  and  self-sacrifice  of  Jesus,  survive 
in  millions  of  hearts  to-day,  just  as  literally  as  the 
lust  of  Mohammed  burns  on  in  every  harem  in 
Delhi,  Cairo,  and  Damascus,  and  in  every  slave- 
mart  in  the  East;  just  as  literally  as  the  ferocity 
of  Mohammed  flames  out  afresh  in  every  Bulga- 
rian, Lebanon,  or  Armenian  massacre. 

Happy  for  Mohammedanism,  by  reason  of  its 
conquest  of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  East,  of 
India,  and  of  Grsecized  Persia,  it  shared  at  the 
outset  the  rare  good  fortune  of  entering  on  a 
splendid  inheritance  of  culture,  art,  literature,  and 
science.  But  the  revival  that  followed  in  architec- 
ture, philosophy,  medicine,  was  never  its  original 
work.  It  was  the  work  of  Greek  scholars,  artists, 
physicians  in  the  pay  of  Islam ;  the  work  of  Indian 
and  Graeco-Persian  architects,  poets,  and  thinkers, 
rebaptized  with  Mohammedan  names.  So  far  as 
of  its  own  spirit  and  essence  it  goes,  in  all  places 
and  in  all  times,  —  at  least  in  the  example  of  its 
rulers  and  privileged  classes,  —  Mohammedanism 
has  tended  to  kill  out  all  higher  life  in  the  harem 
and  to  keep  aflame  tiger  passions  in  the  heart. 
While  the  rank  and  file  of  the  humble  —  because 
too  poor  to  indulge  in  its  sensual  paradise  on  earth 
—  escajDe  its  worst  blight,  and  are  often  models 
of  industry,  temperance,  and  fidelity  to  trust,  they 
none  the  less  share  to  the  full  its  savage  fanati- 
cism, and  postpone  the  harem  only  till  they  shall 
get  to  heaven. 

Indeed,  historically,  has  not  the  claim  made  in 
behalf   of  naked,  numerical  monotheism  —  unless 


DAMASCUS  345 

as  a  protest  against  groveling  idolatry  —  been 
utterly  over-urged  ?  The  moral  content,  the  genu- 
ine humanity  of  a  deity,  is  there  not  here  some- 
thing of  infinitely  deeper  import  than  his  unity  or 
his  omnipotent  sway  ?  Why  were  not  a  hierarchy  of 
such  saints  as  Francis  of  Assisi,  Philip  Neri,  and 
Vincent  de  Paul  an  unspeakable  boon  as  spiritual 
rulers  of  the  universe,  and  to  be  exalted  over  any 
sole  and  absolute  divine  monarch  as  yet  imi^erfectly 
evolved  out  of  the  Bedouin  stage  ?  Surely  to  come 
home  to  the  heart  of  woman  and  to  help  lift  her  out 
of  a  state  of  degradation  into  a  realm  of  dignity, 
one  Virgin  Mary,  enthroned  on  high  by  the  wor- 
shiping heart  as  Queen  of  Heaven,  is  worth  a 
thousand  AUahs. 


ASIA  J^IINOR  AND   GREECE 

In  delicious  spring  weather,  the  sail  from 
Beyrout  to  Smyrna  all  around  the  southern 
and  western  coasts  of  Asia  Minor,  and  among  the 
islands  of  the  archipelago,  is  one  of  the  rich  expe- 
riences of  a  lifetime.  Even  if  the  ever  freshly 
unfolding  scene  spoke  nothing  historical,  the  mere 
sight  of  the  snow-crowned  Taurus  ranges,  the  pic- 
turesque coasts  and  countless  mountain-crested 
islands,  would  hold  the  mind  in  unbroken  delight. 
But  the  whole  atmosphere  is  as  full  of  legend,  his- 
tory, and  biography  as  the  background  of  the  Sis- 
tine  Madonna  of  cherub  heads.  Almost  from  the 
start  one  meets  Paul  in  Tarsus,  Alexander  the 
Great  at  Issus,  Cicero  in  Cilicia.  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  soon  become  realistic  giiidebooks.  What 
a  breeding-place  these  islands  for  the  sea-rovers 
and  pirates  that  at  last  stopped  plundering  one 
another,  and  joined  their  barks  together  for  a 
general  descent  upon  Troy  !  Then,  too,  the  lazy, 
riotous  fellows  left  behind,  hating  work,  with  end- 
less capacity  for  meat  and  drink,  and  never  taking 
no  for  an  answer,  even  from  the  most  distracted 
widow,  —  how  easy  to  transform  them  into  poor  spin- 
ning Penelope's  greedy  suitors,  needing  to  be  thrust 
out  neck  and  heels  on  the  return  home  of  the  much 
wandering  master.     AJl  the  types  are  in  unquick- 


348  ASIA   MINOR  AND  GREECE 

enecl  germ  before  the  eye  to-day,  from  Achilles  to 
Thersites,  the  hints  in  nature  of  what  another 
Homer  might  make  of  them.  But,  alas  I  the  cities 
of  Ionia,  the  temples,  the  poets,  the  philosophers 
are  not, — only  the  sunny  atmosphere  that  bred 
their  early  splendid  civilization. 

Why  is  it,  one  cannot  but  exclaim,  that  our  own 
Atlantic  coast  is  set  up  geologically  after  so  nig- 
gardly a  fashion  ?  It  is  a  positive  affront  to  the 
American  people,  a  stigma  of  commonplace  stamped 
on  the  brow  of  the  great  Republic !  From  Sandy 
Hook  to  the  end  of  Florida  not  an  eminence  rears 
its  head  over  seventy  feet  high,  and  then  eminent 
only  for  sand.  Prosaic  beyond  description  the 
whole  mortal  stretch,  while  the  Mediterranean 
shores  are  one  succession  of  scenic  glories.  Grate- 
fully, perhaps,  one  may  except  the  coast  of  Maine 
as  poetic  enough  for  every-day  prosaic  republicans. 
But  even  at  Mt.  Desert  how  sad  the  dearth  of  sirens 
on  Round  Porcupine,  of  Cyclops  on  Burnt  Por- 
cupine, of  Agamemnons,  Nestors,  and  Ulysseses, 
distributed  as  miniature  kings,  on  the  other  little 
Porcupines.  Perhaps  the  Maine  kings  died  with- 
out a  Homer.  Geologically  speaking,  nothing  short 
of  a  stupendous  volcanic  upheaval  in  the  interest 
of  the  picturesque  from  Sandy  Hook  to  Key  West 
can  ever  give  us  the  inspiration  to  jioetry  the  Med- 
iterranean furnishes  at  every  turn. 

Through  its  figs,  every  one  cherishes  with 

Smyrna  fond  associations  from  his  days  of 

earliest  innocence,  and  to  this  tender  tie  a  mature 


SMYRNA  349 

one  is  added  when  he  sails  into  its  bay  and  harbor 
encircled  with  nionntains,  and  beautiful  as  the  Bay 
of  Naples.  The  city  fronts  the  water  with  a  superb 
quay  two  miles  in  length,  and  backed  by  handsome 
residences.  Of  course,  the  French  built  it, — 
another  outcome  of  the  Damascus  massacre,  and 
as  eyesore  a  reproof  to  the  unspeakable  Turk  of 
how  to  do  things  as  could  be  devised.  Also  due 
to  the  French  is  the  paving  of  two  or  three  of  the 
streets  behind  the  quay,  an  act  perhaps  even  more 
offensive  in  its  pointed  reflection  on  the  streets 
beyond. 

For  the  life  of  me,  in  the  first  drive  we  took,  I 
could  not  keep  out  of  mind  the  image  of  a  precise 
New  England  schoolmarm,  passionately  addicted  to 
object-lessons,  out  for  a  drive  with  a  class  of  little 
boys  and  girls,  and  bent  on  improving  their  minds 
with  the  contrast  between  French  and  Turkish 
methods  of  metropolitan  administration.  "Now, 
dear  children,"  I  seemed  to  hear  her  say,  as  the 
carriage  rolled  smoothly  over  the  level  pavement, 
"  this  is  the  French  idea  of  how  to  pave  a  street. 
Here  a  vehicle  would  last  for  years,  for,  as  you 
see,  there  is  no  strain  nor  wrench  on  wheel  or 
axle."  Then,  suddenly,  as,  on  turning  a  corner 
into  another  street,  the  carriage  struck  a  nest  of 
boulders  that  bounced  the  party  a  foot  up  into 
the  air  and  knocked  their  heads  together,  on  re- 
covery did  I  seem  to  hear  the  faithful  woman  add 
gaspingly,  "And  this  the  Tur-tur-ki-ish I "  But  as 
the  drive  went  on  it  was  no  more  possible  to  hold 
the  children's  attention  to  the  subject  of  comparar 


360  ASIA   MINOR  AND   GREECE 

tive  metropolitan  administration  than  were  they  so 
many  kernels  of  pop-corn  on  a  fire.  All  was  one 
pathetic  outcry  over  bruised  knees,  elbows,  and 
skulls.  Still,  so  severe  the  intellectual  impression 
made,  that  the  normally  educated  young  woman  re- 
turned—  as  I  myself  did  —  with  deeper  convic- 
tions than  ever  to  her  object-lessons.  "  History, 
dear  children,  history,  as  you  may  recall  my  re- 
marking more  than  once  before,  teaches  by  exam- 
ples. How  profound  a  truth !  And  now,  while  I 
get  out  my  bottle  of  chloroform  liniment  and  my 
box  of  Perry  Davis's  Pain  Killer,  and  apply  them 
to  you,  remember  that  no  knowledge  not  bought  at 
a  price  is  of  lasting  value." 

Smyrna  has  no  churches,  mosques,  or  ruins  of 
anj^  historical  interest,  for  which  my  friend  and  I 
felt  most  devoutly  grateful.  Blessed,  in  certain 
moods,  the  land  that  has  no  history !  Four  or  five 
days  of  delicious  exemption  from  sensations  of  the 
sublime  or  instructive  in  art  or  history !  Days  in 
which  we  could  lie  in  the  lap  of  nature,  smoothing 
out  the  wrinkles  on  our  thought-furrowed  brows, 
to  resume  sunny  looks  of  youth  for  Athens.  One 
single  feat  of  physical  energy  we  did  achieve,  toil- 
ing up,  by  a  gentle  declivity,  a  height  of  fully 
three  hundred  feet  that  overlooks  the  city,  and  is 
crowned  by  the  dilapidated  ruins  of  an  old  Turkish 
fort.  What  a  view  seaward  over  the  bay  and  the 
blue  Mediterranean,  landward  over  mountains  and 
fertile  valleys,  peaceful  with  a  soft  atmosj)here  as 
of  eternal  childhood  eating  figs  I  Behind  the  moun- 
tains, charmingly  hidden  from  sight,  lay  Ephesus. 


CONSTANTINOPLE  351 

Should  we  go  there  ?  No,  the  interest  of  Epliesiis, 
we  argued,  is  now  wholly  archaeological.  The 
temples  are  gone,  and  nothing  but  their  sites  re- 
main. The  same  kind  of  site  is  here  in  the 
beauty  of  the  surrounding  scenery.  Why  not, 
then,  lie  here  day-dreaming,  and  so  reconstruct  the 
temples !  The  argument  proved  unanswerable.  In 
other  words,  we  were  on  a  tourist-strike. 

The  three  most  beautiful  regions  of  the 
globe,  said  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  are 
the  Bay  of  Naples,  the  Bavarian  Highlands,  and 
Constantinople.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  quote  so  com- 
petent an  authority,  since  to  Constantinople  my 
friend  and  I  did  not  get.  Cholera  and  quarantine, 
not  desire  or  will,  were  the  guilty  cause.  Great  the 
temptation  to  hide  the  humiliating  fact  under  a 
vivid  eye-witness  picture  of  the  Bosphorus,  con- 
structed out  of  pure  interior  consciousness  with 
hints  from  Murray.  But,  alas !  this  is  a  book  of 
genuine  personal  impressions,  and  where  there  were 
none,  wise  or  foolish,  entertaining  or  stupid,  they 
are  conscientiously  omitted. 

^,^     Our  first  introduction  to  Attica  was  finding 

IV.  .     ,  . 

ourselves  at  six  in  the  morning  off  the  pro- 
montory of  Sunium,  its  abrupt  pi'ecipice  crowned 
with  the  columns  of  a  ruined  temple.  Here  was 
a  classic  greeting,  for  whose  poetic  fitness  one 
could  not  but  be  devoutly  grateful.  For  the  morn- 
ing itself,  however,  it  was  not  easy  to  be  so  grate- 
ful.    It  was  wet  and  chilly,  and  after  nearly  six 


352  ASIA   MINOR  AND  GREECE 

months  of  unbroken  sunshine  one  becomes  too 
spoiled  a  chikl  of  warmth  and  color  not  to  resent 
the  intrusion  of  a  day  of  rain.  Still,  there,  in 
distinct  outline  before  our  eyes,  were  iEgina  and 
Salamis,  and,  later  on,  through  the  misty  distance, 
the  Acropolis  itself.  Could  we  not,  then,  supply 
sunshine  enough  out  of  Plato,  Sophocles,  and 
Phidias  to  light  up  all  with  glory ! 

However  widely  one  has  traveled,  it  is  a  distinct 
surprise  on  landing  at  a  port  like  Piraeus,  where 
the  acquisition  of  Greek  is  attended  with  so  little 
pain,  not  to  find  the  citizens  sitting  around  on  every 
hand,  enthusiastically  reading  the  Crito  or  the  Re- 
J3ublic,  or  laughing  hilariously  over  the  humor  of 
the  Clouds  or  the  Birds.  One  fears  the  influence 
even  of  classic  literature  is  overrated,  when,  instead, 
twenty  men  spring  to  supply  a  cab,  and  touters 
from  rival  hotels  in  Athens  stuff  whole  stacks  of 
cards  into  his  reluctant  hands.  Yet  what  but  classic 
literature  has  brought  so  many  strangers  here,  or 
thus  furnished  a  mellow  soil  in  which  twenty  cab- 
men grow  where  before  grew  but  one  ? 

By  noon  we  were  in  Athens,  be  it  confessed 
more  eager  to  repair  our  own  ruins  with  lunch 
than  to  flee  to  others  that  we  knew  not  of.  That 
done,  the  afternoon  was  all  before  us  where  to 
choose.  My  friend  elected  to  stay  at  home,  to  wait 
for  sunshine,  and  to  knit  up  the  raveled  sleeve  of 
his  emotions  over  Plato's  Symposium  or  Murray's 
Guide.  So  I  sallied  out  alone,  firm  of  intent  to  go 
nowhere  in  especial,  —  a  purpose  that  had  been 
carried  out  to  the  letter  but  that  lo !  a  fresh  illustra- 


THE  PARTHENON  353 

tion  was  suddenly  called  for  of  Cromwell's  famous 
saying  :  "  A  man  never  goes  so  far  as  when  he 
knows  not  whither  he  is  going."  Over  a  row  of 
house-tops  the  Acropolis  reared  its  head,  and  my 
fate  was  sealed. 

A  sudden  fear,  as  on  opening  a  telegram, 
overcomes  one  when  about  to  enter  the 
august  presence  of  an  object  he  has  for  years  read 
and  dreamed  about.  What  will  the  message  evoke  ? 
Congratulations  for  a  birth  or  the  sense  of  blight 
at  a  death?  The  Parthenon,  —  how  many  happy 
hours  had  I  enjoyed  through  life  over  its  friezes 
and  the  superb  figures  from  its  pediments !  How 
many  books  had  I  devoured,  how  many  detail 
drawings  studied,  how  many  brilliant  descriptions 
read  of  its  first  glories,  till  in  imagination  I  could 
see  in  splendid  pageant  the  procession  climbing  the 
steps  of  the  Propylaea,  and  the  temple  stood  forth 
the  one  matchless  Pallas  Athene,  brain-birth  of 
minds  like  Pericles  and  Phidias  !  And  now  in  a 
moment  I  was  to  stand  in  its  actual  presence. 

Harrying  up  the  steep  flights  of  the  Propyltea, 
and  scarcely  looking  to  the  right  or  left  till  I 
reached  the  gateway  through  which  the  whole  ruin 
of  the  Parthenon  stands  visible,  what  was  the  first 
sensation  awaiting  me  ?  I  must  be  sincere,  though 
the  aesthetic  heavens  fall,  —  a  sensation  of  painful 
disapjjointment.  Fresh  from  the  presence  of  such 
overwhelming  ruins  as  those  of  Denderah,  Abydos, 
Luxor,  and  Karnak  in  Egypt,  there  was  no  sense 
of  awe  in  wiat  I  saw  before  me,  no  suggestion  of 


354  ASIA   MINOR  AND  GREECE 

a  Lear  wrestle  with  the  elements,  in  which  the 
broken  monarch  stood  out  sublimer  than  all  the 
rack  of  thunder,  rain,  and  lightning.  Ah,  the 
pity  of  it,  the  pity  of  it !  was  the  sharp  ciy  of  pain. 
There  are  buildings  that  can  endure  being  ruined, 
and  survive  in  triumph.  A  hall  like  Karnak,  a 
mediaeval  castle  like  Conway,  can  be  shattered  by 
earthquake,  blown  up  by  gunpowder,  battered  and 
breached  by  cannon-balls,  and  still  look  more  im- 
perial than  ever.  But  a  perfect  Grecian  temple 
was  never  made  for  a  ruin,  any  more  than  an  or- 
chestra to  have  its  havp-strings  cut  and  its  viols 
shattered,  any  more  than  a  lovely  marble  face  to 
have  an  eye  destroyed  or  its  smile-wreathed  lips 
dashed  in.  Tlie  harmony  was  all.  In  the  spiritual 
contribution  of  each  co-working  feature  lay  the 
spell. 

Of  course,  one  knows  beforehand  that  the  Par- 
thenon is  in  ruins.  Who  has  not  made  his  passion- 
ate Isis  search  for  the  mangled  remnants  of  this 
beautiful  Osiris,  scattered  through  all  the  lands ! 
It  is  those  broken  fragments,  those  floating  strains 
of  music,  that  have  prophesied  to  us  of  the  once 
perfect  whole.  Every  section  of  its  frieze,  what 
a  masterpiece  of  grace,  dignity,  action,  fire ! 
Every  figure  on  its  pediments,  and  the  whole  in 
combination,  what  a  vision  vouchsafed  the  sight 
of  the  gods  on  Olympus  !  Each  column  or  archi- 
trave how  it  led  on  the  mind  to  its  harmonious 
relations  with  the  rest !  The  material,  too,  costly  as 
precious  stones,  was  everywhere  relieved  with  gild- 
ing and  bronze,  and  with  delicately  shaded  back- 


THE  PARTHENON  355 

grounds,  to  set  off  the  figures.  To  Phidias,  what 
remains  to-day  would  seem  but  the  half-erected 
scaffolding.  He  who,  compassed  about  with  his 
glorious  peers,  had  created  this  dream  of  beauty, 
could  recreate  it  in  his  mind's  eye.  There  it 
already  preexisted  before  a  stone  was  laid.  But 
who  of  us  can  reconstruct  so  much  as  a  broken 
hand  or  dented  brow  or  wind-tossed  drapery  ? 
Here  recasting  imagination  faints,  and  sinks 
moaning  to  the  ground.  The  Orjjheus  lyre,  whose 
harmonies  should  sing  these  scattered  fragments 
into  place,  it  is  not  ours  to  strike.  There  they  lie, 
—  the  graciously  wrought  stones  by  the  thousands 
of  tons,  as  in  a  brute  stone-cutter's  yard.  It  is  a 
sight  to  weep  over.  No,  I  repeat  it,  a  perfected 
Greek  temple  was  never  made  for  a  ruin.  A 
group  of  detached  columns,  suggesting  nothing 
beyond  themselves,  may  make  a  beautiful  picture. 
But  there  is  at  once  too  much  and  too  little  of  the 
Parthenon  left  behind. 

It  was,  I  know,  a  dank,  chilly  afternoon,  that  of 
my  first  visit  to  the  Acropolis ;  and  rain  and  ruins, 
mingling  with  constitutional  tendencies  to  depression 
over  the  wrecks  of  time  and  fate,  constitute  an  ill 
sort  of  personal  equation  that  must  be  allowed  for. 
Not  so  much  as  a  light-minded  tourist  had  ventured 
out  to  relieve  my  mind  by  jocular  gayeties  over  the 
Venetian  bombshell  that  had  thus  effectually 
hoisted  with  its  petard  so  much  good  marble,  or 
hilariously  to  demand  if  it  would  not  have  been  fun 
to  see  things  jump.  For  two  whole  hours,  rain  and 
chill  and  I  had  our  comments  all  to  ourselves  over 


356  ASIA  MINOR  AND  GREECE 

Propylaea,  Nike  Apteros,  Erectheion,  Parthenon, 
with  frequent  interi)olations  of  texts  from  the  fate- 
burdened  Lamentations  of  Jeremiah.  Nothing 
seemed  wanting  —  but  to  behold  somewhere,  sitting 
sunk  in  dejection,  on  a  broken  block,  Michelan- 
gelo's tremendous  figure  of  the  prophet,  and  to 
iiear,  sighing  in  the  bleak  wind :  "  How  doth  the 
city  sit  solitary  that  was  fviU  of  people !  How  is 
she  become  even  as  a  widow!  She  weepeth  sore 
in  the  night,  and  her  tears  are  on  her  cheeks. 
Among  all  her  lovers  she  hath  none  to  comfort 
her." 

Again  and  again  did  I  afterwards  climb  the 
Acropolis,  and  in  w^arm,  radiant  sunshine.  How 
entrancing  the  view  over  the  sea  to  -35gina  and 
Salamis,  and  landward  over  Hymettus  and  Pen- 
telicus,  and  across  the  plain  green  with  the  young 
wheat  and  gray  with  the  olive  orchards !  Over 
the  wall  one  looks  down  into  the  amphitheatre  of 
Dionysus,  where  -3^schylus  purged  with  terror, 
Sophocles  with  pity,  and  Aristophanes  with  peals 
of  laughter  their  responsive  audiences  ;  and  yonder 
across  the  blue  sea  lies  the  Strait  of  Salamis,  so 
easy  to  light  up  with  the  flash  of  the  arms  and 
set  resounding  with  the  war-cries  of  the  Athenian 
and  Persian  fleets.  All  speaks,  —  valor,  poetry, 
eloquence,  wisdom.  But  the  flower  that  bloomed 
full  of  the  sap,  purple  and  gold  with  the  color, 
redolent  of  the  perfume  of  all  this  outburst  of 
human  genius,  —  the  Parthenon,  —  for  all  the  pa- 
thetic search  for  the  scattered  petals  of  this  con- 
summate  flower   of    creation,   one    poor,   baffled, 


ELEUSIS  357 

heart-sore  Isis  must  sadly  confess  that  she  cannot 
find  and  restore  her  slain  Osiris.  I  look  up 
through  the  columns  at  the  blue  sky.  I  see  the 
sunshine  flooding  them ;  I  feel  the  dignity  and 
beauty  of  the  wreck  that  remains ;  but  the  sense 
of  bereavement  swallows  up  the  sense  of  joy. 

As  the  deepest  seas  lie  at  the  base  of  the 
most  towering  mountains,  and  the  pro- 
foundest  abysses  of  human  tragedy  at  the  feet  of 
the  most  radiant  summits  of  prosperity,  so  has  it 
been  in  Grecian  history.  Few  countries  does  one 
visit  where  the  wreck  of  former  glory  is  so  com- 
plete, till  artistically  the  cry  is  on  the  lips,  "  The 
nearer  to  Rome,  the  farther  from  God !  "  A  day 
in  the  Vatican  or  the  museums  of  Naples  and 
Florence,  or  in  the  villas  surrounding  Rome,  and 
one  lives,  moves,  and  has  his  being  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  Greek  art  as  nowhere  in  the  land  of  its 
birth.  Still,  to  see  that  land  is  one  more  key 
wherewith  to  unlock  its  treasures  and  interpret 
the  nature  and  life  out  of  which  they  grew.  One 
envies  the  happy  fellows  in  the  American  school 
at  Athens,  with  years  at  free  disposal  to  study  out 
the  position  of  every  lost  site,  living  always  in  the 
hope  of  unearthing  some  new  miracle  of  beauty. 
None  the  less,  for  all  their  labors,  the  interest  of 
the  ruins  —  the  Acropolis,  Theseion,  and  a  few 
other  monuments  excepted  —  is  mainly  archaeo- 
logical. 

One  drives,  for  example,  through  the  mountains 
and  along  the  Sacred  Way  by  the  Strait  of  Salamis 


358  ASIA   MINOR  AND  GREECE 

to  Eleusis.  The  very  landscape  is  sculpture  as 
well  as  nature,  so  statuesquely  outlined  the  moun- 
tain-shapes and  so  gracious  the  curves  and  recesses 
of  the  shores.  The  very  severity  of  the  scenery, 
the  absence  of  all  tropical  luxuriance  of  foliage,  is 
Doric  Greek  in  impression. 

Then,  what  a  site  had  old  Eleusis,  elevated  just 
enough  to  furnish  a  telling  j^latform  for  its  temples 
and  to  set  them  in  relief  against  the  broad  wheat- 
sown  plains  and  the  simple  environing  mountains, 
with,  on  the  other  side,  the  blue  waters  of  the 
strait.  The  Eleusinian  Mysteries,  too,  once  cele- 
brated there,  —  the  Ober-Ammergau  Passion  Play 
of  Greece,  —  enacted,  however,  not  by  simple  pea- 
sants, but  by  a  priesthood  steeped  in  the  deejjest 
mystic  thought,  poetry,  art,  and  passion  of  Greece 
and  of  the  Orient,  —  mysteries  of  the  abysses  of 
atonement,  purification,  redemption,  in  which,  as 
perhaps  nowhere  else  in  Greece,  the  profoundest 
depths  of  the  soul  were  sounded,  —  who  has  not 
had  his  dreams  of  these  ?  But  ah  !  as  in  our  own 
far-western  states,  where  once  stood  a  forest  of 
noble  pines,  their  high  interlacing  branches  a  cov- 
ert for  the  birds  and  the  haunt  of  mysterious 
beauty,  so  often  there  stands  to-day  but  a  wilder- 
ness of  scarred,  unsightly  stumps,  and  the  forest- 
lover  moans  over  the  ruin  ;  so,  in  Eleusis,  of  all 
that  grove  of  stately  temples,  there  remain  but  the 
stumps  of  a  wilderness  of  columns  three  or  four 
feet  in  height.  So  is  it  everywhere  in  Greece,  go 
to  Olympia  or  Delphi,  go  anywhere  one  will. 

Yet,  benedictions  on  the  heads  of  the  arch^olo- 


MARATHON  359 

gists  who  have  dug  out  these  temj^le  cemeteries 
and  revealed  what  yet  remains  of  the  ribs,  verte- 
brae, and  skulls  of  the  once  glorified  runners  and 
leapers  of  the  palmy  days  of  Greece.  Transfigured 
"  Old  Mortalities  "  they  !  in  their  piety  keeping 
green  the  memories  of  worthies  that  should  never 
die.  In  vain  the  callow  tourist  thinks  to  vent  on 
them  his  private  grief,  with  his  despairing  cry, 
"  Son  of  man,  can  these  dry  bones  live  ?  "  His 
eye  lit  with  prophecy,  each  spade-shouldering  Eze- 
kiel  among  them  proudly  answers  back,  "  Behold, 
I  will  cause  breath  to  enter  into  them,  and  they 
shall  live.  And  I  will  lay  sinews  upon  them,  and 
will  bring  up  flesh  upon  them  and  cover  them  with 
skin.  Come  from  the  four  winds,  O  breath,  and 
breathe  upon  these  slain,  that  they  may  live !  " 

How  much  less  genius  is  required  to  re- 
construct a  battlefield  than  a  Parthenon ! 
One  feels  this  in  all  the  elation  of  victory  when 
he  drives  out  to  Marathon.  Once  on  the  spot, 
how  easy  to  draw  up  in  battle  array  the  hundred 
thousand  Persians,  and  then,  as  freeborn  Greeks, 
to  jDroceed  to  demolish  them !  Indeed,  all  these 
annihilating  victories  of  a  handful  of  hardy,  disci- 
plined troops  over  hordes  of  slaves  without  honor 
and  without  hearthstones  to  light  for  are  repeti- 
tions of  the  same  story.  Clive  at  Plassey,  in  India, 
and  Miltiades  in  Greece  are  one. 

In  the  East  one  learns  to  read  the  open  secret. 
Not  that  one  would  pluck  down  Miltiades  from  his 
grand  historical  pedestal.     But  the  excellency  of 


3G0  ASIA  MINOR  AND  GREECE 

the  glory  lies  in  being  free  men,  in  pride  of  civic 
character,  in  high  intelligence,  and  obedience  to 
reason's  law.  Given  these,  yonr  hordes  of  slaves 
can  no  more  stand  up  against  them  than  the  wheat 
stalks  of  the  Dakota  grainfields  before  the  on- 
rolling  steam-reapers. 

Yet,  it  was  a  pleasure  to  visit  the  scene  of  this 
ever  memorable  feat  in  the  history  of  civilization, 
—  the  bare,  bleak  mountains,  the  narrow  valley 
against  whose  sides  the  Greeks  protected  their 
flanks,  the  broad,  swampy  plain  in  front,  the  blue 
waters  of  the  Euboean  Strait  in  which  lay  the 
Persian  fleet,  —  and  there  once  more  to  ponder  the 
deep-freighted  lesson  that  the  "heaviest  battalion" 
does  not  always  mean  the  one  that  will  tip  the 
scale  in  mere  avoirdupois,  but  the  one  that  to 
weight  adds  the  momentum  of  liberty  and  sacrifice. 

,^,,^   Our   stay  in  Athens  was   crowned  with  a 
VIII.  ... 

final  night  of  peace  and  reconciliation  that 

will  ever  linger  in  memory.     The  moon  was  nearly 

at  its  full,  when,  at  nine  o'clock,  my  friend  and  I 

climbed   the   Acropolis.     A  flood  of   softest  light 

was  pouring  down  among  the  broken  columns  of 

the  Propylsea,  while  the  little  temple  of  Nike  Ap- 

teros    stood   poised  on   its  high   pedestal,  a  fairy 

creation  of  moonbeams.     All  stains  and  scars  of 

time  were  dissolved  away  till  there  was  no  more 

sorrow,  nor  crying,   neither  was    there    any  more 

pain.     Peaceful  as  a  lovely  cemetery  in  which  the 

saintly  ones  are  sleeping  lay  the  vast  area  around 

the  temple,  strewn  with  its  countless,  softly  gleam- 


ATHENS'  PARTING  BENEDICTION      361 

iiig  blocks.  Steeped  in  the  full  tide  of  moonliglit 
hovering-  down  upon  its  columns  and  nestling  in 
their  recesses,  the  whole  eastern  and  southern 
sides  of  the  Parthenon  were  transfigured  into  a 
still  dream-world  of  light  and  sweetness.  You 
cannot  shatter  dream-world.  Here  is  a  visionary- 
realm  whose  material  is  of  no  suLstance  that  vio- 
lence can  smite  and  fracture.  Its  fallins:  columns 
sink  to  the  earth  as  gently  as  a  drow^sy  child  into 
its  bed  of  down.  The  mind,  too,  is  so  at  peace. 
No  longer  capable  of  suffering,  it  is  translated 
into  an  ethereal  sphere  above  the  w^orld  of  weight 
and  wreck.  The  very  yearning  for  perfection, 
which  is  the  glory  and  the  agony  of  human  life, 
is  laid  to  rest.  One  has  reached  Nirvana.  Tears 
this  night  were  no  longer  on  the  cheeks  of  discon- 
solate Pallas  Athene.  Her  weeping  was  over,  and 
she  had  lapsed  into  sweet,  dreamless  sleep. 


INDEX 


Abana,  the,  340. 
Abu,  Mt.,  245. 
Aden,  257. 

Adullam,  cave  of,  326. 
^gina,  352, 
Agra,  220. 
Ahmedabad,  251. 
Ajalon,  valley  of,  314. 
A'kbar,  the  Great,  218. 
Amber,  241. 

Anti-Lebanon  ranges,  339. 
Apis  Mausoleum,  282. 
Arabia,  25(3. 
Asia  Minor,  347. 
Atami,  42. 
Athens,  354. 

Baalbec,  338. 
Benares,  186. 
Bethlehem,  322. 
Beyrout,  335. 

Buddhism,    in    Japan,    48 ;     in 
Thibet,  171. 

Cairo,  272. 

Calcutta,  165,  180. 

Canton,  116. 

Canton  River,  113. 

Cawnpore,  19i>. 

Ceylon,  148. 

Cheops,  pjTamid  of,  273. 

Cherith,  Brook,  331. 

China,  97. 

China  Sea,  97. 

Chinese  conservatism,  98. 

Confucius,  128. 

Daibutsu,  the,  28. 
Damascus,  166,  169. 
Darjeeling,  339. 
Dead  Sea,  332. 
Delhi,  232. 
Denderah,  305. 
Desaix,  163. 
Desert,  the,  255. 


Egypt,  255. 

Egyptian  temples,  302. 
Egyptian  tombs,  284. 
Eleusis,  358. 
Enoshima,  35. 
Everest,  Mt.,  166,  174. 

Ferozabad,  236. 
Forty-Seven  Renins,  the,  68. 
Fujisan,  10. 

Ganges,  the,  165,  186. 
Gizeh,  pyramids  of,  273. 

Hachiman,  temple  of,  28. 

Hakone  lake,  42. 

Hermon.  Mt.,  338. 

Himalayas,  166. 

Hindu  architecture,  251. 

Holy  Sepulchre,  Church  of,  321. 

Hong  Kong,  110. 

Hoogly,  the,  165. 

Idzu,  42,  46. 
India,  163. 
Indrapat,  236. 
Ismailia,  262. 

Jaffa,  310. 

Jain  temples,  245. 

Japan,  13. 

Japanese  architecture,  58. 

art,  72. 

bells,  60.  _ 

characteristics  of,  38. 

civilization,  58. 

crusading  spirit,  89. 

manners,  (i.'i. 

missions,  82. 

moral  standards,  68. 

smile,  20. 

temples,  56. 

women,  18. 
Jasmine  Tower,  the,  224. 
Jericho,  329. 


364 


INDEX 


Jerusalem,  313. 
Jeypore,  238. 
Jinrikishas,  3G. 
Jordan,  the,  333. 

Kamakura,  27. 
Kamakura  Buddha,  the,  30. 
Kandy,  152. 
Karnak,  temple  of,  308. 
Kinchiiijanga,  KiG.  174. 
Kurnah,  temple  of,  310. 
Kutb  Minar,  the,  235. 
Kyoto,  Nijo  Palace  in,  75. 

Lebanon  ranges,  337. 
Lucknow,  !!)(>. 
Luxor,  temple  of,  304. 

Madras,  163. 

Malagawa  Buddhist  temple,  153, 

15!). 
Marathon,  359. 
Mariette,  281. 
Medinet  Habu,  .308. 
Memnon,  statues  of,  308. 
Memphis,  27i>. 
Miyanoshita,  44,  46. 
Moab,  mountains  of,  331. 
Mog-ui  dynasty,  217. 
Mohammed,  257. 
Mohammedanism,  340. 

Nagasaki.  97. 

Nijo  Palace  in  Kyoto,  75. 

Nikko,  48. 

NUe,  the,  269. 

Olives,  Mount  of,  314. 
Orang-utan,  the,  144. 

Palestine,  309. 
Parthenon,  the,  353. 
Pearl  Mosque,  the,  227. 
Peradeniya  Botanical  Gardens, 
158. 


Piraeus,  the,  352. 
Pisgah,  .'vil. 
Pondicherry,  163. 
Port  Said,  309. 

Quannon,  temple  of,  28, 

Ramesseum,  the,  310. 
Red  Sea,  256. 
Rocky  Mountains,  4. 

Saganii  Bay,  28. 

Sakkarah,  277. 

Saracenic  architecture  in  India. 

221. 
Sati,  182. 
Senchal,  176. 
Serapeum,  the,  282. 
Shamien,  the,  117. 
Shanghai,  97,  101. 
Shintoism,  87. 
Sikkini,  KKJ. 
Silliguri,  1()6. 
Singapore,  137. 
Smyrna,  348. 
St.  Paul,  Minnesota,  3. 
Sthora,  339. 
Suez,  260. 
Sunium,  351. 

Taj  Mahal,  the,  227. 
Ten  Province  Pass,  42,  46. 
Thi,  Tomb  of,  282. 
Thibet,  168. 
Tiger  Hill,  176.  _ 
Tokyo,  University  of,  89. 
Tropics,  the,  135. 
Tughlakabad,  234. 

Wusung,  101. 

Yang-tse-Kiang  River,  101. 
Yokohama,  15. 
Yokohama  bay,  10. 
Yumoto,  42. 


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